My ground - Joseph Torra

Following the teenage boy in Gas Station and the department store salesman in Tony Luongo, the narrator in the third and final part of the My Ground trilogy is a middle aged female housecleaner. Again, Torra's concern is with the lives of blue collar workers in Massachusetts, and with the attempts of an individual to carve an identity for his or herself in a harsh world. My Ground is the story of Lauren Bell's less than stable life of failed relationships, a difficult childhood, weight problems and ECT treatment. It's bleaker than Gas Station and Tony Luongo, but the narrator's voice is as powerful - again, there's the sense of the span of a human life skilfully compressed into a short novel, and the various strands are pulled together at the close into a horrific climax.