TY - JOUR T1 - Mountains of the Moon JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 432 LP - 433 DO - 10.3399/bjgp13X670822 VL - 63 IS - 613 AU - Peter Murchie Y1 - 2013/08/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/63/613/432.2.abstract N2 - IJ KAY Vintage Books, 2013 PB, 350pp, £8.99, 9780099554738Mountains of the Moon is the debut novel of IJ Kay and is a wonderful survivor’s story. As a means to understanding the life not lived — surely a test of great writing — I would put this novel up there with James Kelman’s How Late it Was, How Late. That novel caused enormous upset among the UK’s literary ‘elite’ when it won the Man Booker Prize in 1994. ‘Frankly, its crap’, moaned Julia Neuberger as she resigned from the panel when Kelman won, presumably protesting that stark insights into the lives of this country’s provincial underclass are not suitable reading matter for North London’s book clubs. Well, in Mountains of the Moon, IJ Kay has captured what it is to be a young woman dragged up by hopeless parents and well-meaning social services in modern Britain. She has managed it imaginatively, lyrically, and a good bit less profanely than her great predecessor.IJ Kay is, like her novel, something of an enigma, choosing to live and write on a canal boat navigating the waterways of England. The narrative of her surprising and exhilarating debut novel certainly does not flow in a stately fashion like one of the author’s beloved English waterways. Indeed reading it was more akin to a ramble through Hampton Court maze; the first-person narrative bounding back and forth through the present and past life of our variously (six at my count) named heroine. This is not an easy book to read. Ultimately, … ER -