Orlaine McDonald is a debut novelist, and one happy to mention having taken a Creative Writing MA at Goldsmiths in No Small Thing’s acknowledgements – studying under Francis Spufford and receiving guest tuition from Bernardine Evaristo, no less. As a teller of human stories with social and historical contexts, here McDonald demonstrates a skill that can be refined in a classroom, but not taught from whole cloth.

The novel centres on the lives of three London women: Livia, her daughter Mickey, and Mickey’s daughter Summer. They are Black and mixed race – “skin tones from deepest cinnamon to buttermilk” – and No Small Thing is in some respects about the Black British experience, though often this is more a background hum than the primary topic. It is also about social class fissures, misogyny both casual and ingrained, and coping strategies for times of suboptimal mental health.

Each of the three generations of women have known family-related heartbreak, from abandonment to bereavement, and react to it in differing (yet similar) ways. Livia, a would-be anchor, has the wisdom of experience while barely holding it together; Mickey combines a hair-trigger temper with a paucity of self-respect. Only Summer’s age (11) is made clear, as she’s threatened with exclusion from school despite desperately wanting to behave. Their stories are familiar, phrased this way at least, but as characters they are three-dimensional.

No Small Thing begins and ends with a death, the same one – only at the denouement do we find out whose. After that beginning, it’s something of a slow burner, which is a euphemistic way of saying I read 40 pages or so before starting to care about these people. And, despite other minor criticisms (florid similes are not McDonald’s strength; the onset of a brief subplot involving paedophilia can be seen from space and feels superfluous), perseverance is strongly recommended with this strong debut.