A nightshade plant may be poisonous, as with deadly nightshade; or it might offer nutrition, as with tomatoes, aubergines and similar. In this frank and finely written memoir, former National Poet For Wales Gwyneth Lewis shares the story of her childhood and of being raised by a mother who is both nurturing and noxious, caregiving and coercive, often acting with selfishness and seeing her offspring as an extension of herself rather than a human being in her own right.

‘Pressure’ is a key word in the world of the young writer, who is treated as more of an academic workhorse than a carefree child, with a strong sense of unease and wrongness pervading these pages. “How do you live in a poisoned home atmosphere?” is one of the questions Lewis endeavours to address, with stark and startling results. Drawing from diaries she has kept all her life, Lewis links in with her younger self to write this true and, at times, terrible tale of a young person bound, wound, and in a sense strangulated by her family’s hold upon her.

Offering an adult’s eye, an intellectual’s interpretation, and a poet’s strong associative sense, this is a powerful read, with the pain felt by the child, and then the outrage experienced by the adult, palpable. Brave and brilliant, you will be shocked – yet also impressed – by the quality of the writing, but also the quality of the mind and soul that shines through.