Gloria Don’t Speak by Lucy Apps review – tender portrait of a woman with a learning disability

Longlisted for the Women’s prize, this ambitious debut journeys into the inner world of a vulnerable teenager who is left traumatised by a toxic friendship Lucy Apps’s debut novel tells the story of 19-year-old Gloria, who is living in east London with her mum in the summer of 1999. Gloria has a learning disability and is past the age when the state might offer her support. Often she is happy enough “to stop outdoors where it is nice and busy, and watch things happen and be part of it”. But s...

By Alice Jolly