Why Be Happy . . . ? begins with a description of a mother: ‘A woman who kept a revolver in the duster drawer, and the bullets in a tin of Pledge.’ One of the many surprises of this book, reviewed at Shelf Indulgence, is that it is not crime fiction – nor even a novel – but a memoir.

The ‘woman’ is Constance Winterson, Jeanette’s adoptive mother, a monstrous depressive who terrorized her husband and daughter; a desperately lonely woman who adopted a baby because...