...it will be sensitive and sympathetic. Radio 4 listeners are a cultured lot, we don't tend to take things at face value, and prefer not to get engaged in sensationalism.

The novel itself has been shortlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction. From one of the Amazon reviews:

This is a novel about family love and community bonds. About the fierce, unconditional love of a mother for her son, Wayne, who journeys to become her daughter Annabel; the way in which a father, despite the traditional ways of his own upbringing, comes to a redemptive relationship with his child. It is about the power of friendship and reveals the ways in which people can be different from our initial judgement of them. It is haunting and deeply moving.