New fiction: Mrs Engels

Lizzie Burns is fierce, proud and poetic – lit with a determination to make the best of things, bad as they are, and enjoy herself while doing it.

Gavin McCrea’s fictionalised life of Frederick Engels’ long-term partner portrays her as a woman of principle disguised by realism, engaged in the political struggles of the time (despite not being able to read), well-versed in the language of poverty from her days working in the cotton mills and troubled by her unsettling, vital relationship with Engels.

Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea (Scribe, £14.99) is out now