So, to get to the point, if it's a ripping yarn you're after you should give up now. Just put the damned book down and find something more satisfying, a love story perhaps, or a thriller. A story where the goodies win and the baddies get what they deserve. Because there are no goodies here, just me, my family, and a turtle that speaks with a Glasgow accent. In other words, complete and utter shite. Or, as I prefer to see it, the truth. Because sometimes they're both the same thing, truth and lies. And you can't have one without the other, can you?

Set in a bleak and rain-bedrizzled Glasgow, this is the story of Donald Pinelli, whose mother Trixie is not only mad, she's psychic too - not a good combination, especially when it means she's convinced Donald is cursed to die by drowning on his eighteenth birthday. As if that it isn't enough, Donald has to contend with a gangster father, siblings who hate him and a best friend who betrays him. Life's mince, and no mistake. But an unexpected encounter with a cantankerous turtle in a rundown zoo abruptly sets young Donald on a crash course in survival.

Years later, Trixie's death brings an older but not much wiser Donald back to Glasgow - to attend her funeral, sort through his childhood memories, come to terms with his failures, and maybe, who knows, forge a new life for himself without his carapace of bitterness and resentment.

A novel of great and gritty charm, this is an eccentric, bittersweet and defiant story about family, fate and the slipperiness of truth, with a hero - and a turtle - you will never forget.