Book review: Close Your Eyes, By Ewan Morrison

First-time mother Emma is in possession of a comfortable home and an adoring husband who rubs her shoulders with lavender oil and studies the parenting manuals.

But sleep deprivation is getting the better of her, and memories of her own long-lost mother invade her thoughts. She returns to Scotland and the remote hippie commune where she was born.

It was from here, 30 years earlier, that her mother drove into the night, never to return. This novel conjures up the shock of new motherhood with skill. A fearsome read, it latches on and won't let go.