Maxine Peake narrates a profoundly moving and unsparing hybrid memoir that explores unconditional love, in all its messiness

A memoir in the form of a prose poem, Megan Barker’s Kit tells of a friendship that began when the author was in her early 20s. When Barker first meets Kit in 1998, he has “an attitude of someone ready to dig in their heels, else spring from the hamstrings, take flight”. The pair become inseparable and talk “about IT ALL … With so much time in our hands to sift and loop and spool our world we are in each day, in each hour of each day, entangled”.

Their friendship continues into middle age by which time Barker is married with three young children. She cherishes the time spent in the company of her old friend, and away from the demands of family. So when Kit is laid low by a debilitating depression, she instinctively wants to take care of him. Against her husband Mac’s wishes, she invites him to join the family on holiday at a house in rural Wales. It is a decision that ends in disaster and a desperate call to the emergency services.