Throughout Little Bit, Heather Taylor-Johnson drops in seemingly unconnected vignettes from her mother’s childhood before telling us that they probably “won’t make it into the book”. Like shiny discarded coins, these moments stop us in our tracks, daring us to examine them and judge whether or not they belong. This technique, which peels back the layers of the writing process and draws attention to the constructed nature of this family history, is characteristic of the author’s thrillingly unorthodox approach.

The book, described by publisher Wakefield Press as “part memoir, part biography, part imagination”, follows the perspectives of three generations of women: the author herself, her mother Debbie, and her grandmother (here called Stella). The chapters titled Heather see the author at an artist’s retreat, working on the very manuscript the reader now holds. So while a key theme of the book is the fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, it is also very much about storytelling itself and how we make sense of memories.

Little Bit is the result of the author’s efforts over many years to capture Debbie’s story on the page. In this sense, it reminded me of Sophie Cunningham’s This Devastating Fever (2022) – another memorable autofiction novel about grappling with an untameable writing project that changes form over time.

A central concern of Little Bit is Taylor-Johnson’s attempt to understand Stella, a woman she knows primarily from her mother’s anecdotes and doesn’t much like (“So why,” she asks, “should my readers care about her?”). In this pursuit she lays bare every tactic, telling us that she has invented sympathetic scenes and endearing qualities about her grandmother, paradoxically to make her more real and less of a one-dimensional figure of myth.

The reader finds themselves moved by moments they know to be made up – a concept we accept without a second thought in most novels, but which is made more complicated here.

Taylor-Johnson ­– a poet and novelist (Pursuing Love & Death, Jean Harley Was Here) ­– succeeds in writing vivid characters whose motivations and psychologies are rounded and compelling (likeable or not). As Debbie endures a series of abandonments, learns about love from other mother figures, and eventually becomes a mother herself, the book beautifully explores the tension between wanting to distance yourself from the mistakes of your parents, and recognising how your family has shaped you.

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The world of Little Bit is similarly vibrant. Taylor-Johnson takes a sensory approach to setting, inviting us to see, touch, and taste each scene. Stella’s first words are, “Oh, smell that place”, and by the end of her opening paragraph we’re sitting with her at the sticky beer-splashed bar, surrounded by cigarette smoke and the grunts and guffaws of men.

As Stella later says: “Hearing is never fully believing; you’ve got to see things with your own eyes.” Taylor-Johnson allows us to do just that in this poignant and richly complex tale of artmaking and motherhood.

Little Bit, by Heather Taylor-Johnson, is published by Wakefield Press.