An evocative and sharply impressive debut about family secrets and female identity by talented young novelist Rose Ruane

'Mind-blowingly masterous . . . This Is Yesterday jangled my insides around completely. Rose Ruane is truly something else' Jessica Fosketew, co-host of The Guilty Feminist

Peach is alone and adrift in London's sprawl, with a stalled art career and an unhappiness she knows won't be cured by a boyfriend or baby. Then she gets a shocking phone call that brings her face to face with her fractured family, and send her spiralling into her past, to a scorched summer years ago in 90s suburbia . . .

Back in 1994, Peach longs to flee the stifling nowhere that makes her a misfit. Hot listless days and sleepless drunken nights have awakened in her a latent, destructive curiosity; she haunts airless attics, unlocks sealed doors, pries into private affairs and finally unearths a secret that rips her family apart, disrupting everything and setting the course for the rest of her life.

Now, facing this new crisis, Peach and her sister set out to confront a past they have avoided for two decades and meet a future they have no idea how to navigate.

This is Yesterday is a book about beginnings and endings, about adolescence and ageing, failures, families, love and loneliness. It is the story of how the girls we once were shape the women we become.

'Sex and desire are complicated, and Ruane captures the how and why of that perfectly . . . Ruane's Peach is someone you'll want to shake and cuddle, sometimes simultaneously, for This is Yesterday conveys the messiness of real life - as well as its poignancy' Lee Randall, Books from Scotland

'Inhabited by weak men and strong women, This Is Yesterday is shot through with rumination and echoes with regret, yet offers a voice of hope for those who boldly follow their own creative path from adolescence to middle age' Ben Myers, author of The Offing

'Ruane brings an earthy immediacy to bear on her exploration of the long-simmering tensions that warp the middle-class Lewis family . . . a tale told with passion and honesty' Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on Sunday

'Stunningly written . . . Enjoyably disturbing' Wendy Holden, Daily Mail

'This darkly funny book is very insightful about family dynamics and how small choices can leave us far from where we meant to be' Good Housekeeping