360 flip - Molly McGrann

In Three-Sixty Flip, Molly McGrann takes the American dream -- ranch houses, sprinklers on the lawn, safe streets, good neighbours -- and explores what lies beneath its surface.

Babo is a teenage skateboarder, lovingly neglected by his distracted lawyer parents adn ignored by his older brother, Mitch, home for the summer having spent his college years running to keep up with his rich-kid friends and refusing to think about the rest of his life. Mitch is desperate to make it to Manhattan, but lacking money, or, as he sees it, any acceptable way of getting money, he spends his days in his stifling bedroom, looking at cyberporn and spying on his attractive neighbour on her stairmaster.

It is around Babo and Mitch's family that Molly McGrann has centred her novel, which beautifully captures the surface quietness of a suburban community, the aspirations of those who live there, the dreams of those who built it, and the tensions which bubble and spit within. Three-Sixty Flip is a debut by a writer with rare humanity, talent and wit.