Deep Down: the 'intimate, emotional and witty' 2023 debut you don't want to miss

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West-Knights considers the oddities of modern life for people in their twenties and thirties – from sharing a rented flat with a girl who once threw ‘farewell drinks before going on a three-week holiday’, to endless obligatory debates about the best Tesco meal deal. Imogen West Knights reveals family silence and repression in a way which feels almost agonisingly true to life.

Millenials philosophising about mundane things while roaming around the streets of Paris and surviving on bread and water. A sensitive look at grief, families, ambition, anger and the complexity of loving and hating someone all at once.West-Knights takes the tradition of the British family novel - with all its resentment, over-drinking and passive aggression - and transcends it: Deep Down is funny, sad, tender and hopeful. Secondly, I think that the story could have used additional layers on top of the grief and resentment they were experiencing in the present day. The passage about how they used to try and make each other laugh in church particularly brought me back. The narrative voice is fluent and assured, with an eye for detail and original images: a cup of tea is “crunchy with limescale”; clearing up after one of their father’s rages is “rebuilding the set on which their performance of normal life takes place”. Funny, moving and unexpected, Deep Down is an empathetic and hard-hitting look at both the struggles and the joys of sibling relationships, and the realities of grieving the loss of someone who was already an absence.

West-Knights deftly shows us that the relationship between the siblings, and with their dad William, is anything but straightforward. Billie's chair screeches and she begins to pick up bits of a jar with a careful thumb and forefinger. Deep Down is something altogether darker; an examination of the legacy of abuse shot through with sharp wit and compassion. The novel is a serious and very accomplished examination of what it means to love and grieve for someone who might seem unlovable. The withholding of information is masterfully sustained as we come to understand why they have responded to their father’s death with such profound ambiguity.Don't get me wrong, I do think that there are some really touching and relatable moments in this book. They are repairing the scenery, rebuilding the set on which their performance of normal life takes place.

This book has opened my eyes and made me realise to be grateful for who you have and what you have got. Tom, the elder, is working there in an English-themed pub, avoiding the failure of his acting career (“not knowing what he is doing in Paris feels more productive than not knowing at home”).

Both are drifting, distant from each other and their mother, until this death shakes to the foundation the defences they have built over the years against the violence of their family history. I just wish it was easier to follow and that we got to know the characters even better so that those moments held more weight. I’m definitely categorising this one in the ‘sad girl reads’ section because it’s a pretty bleak and edgy take on family and grief.