Brought to you by Penguin.

“Everyone has their cost. It’s not always monetary. Mine is certainly though. 20 quid.”

Single mum. ‘Stain on culture’. Caught inside a poverty trap.

It’s a luxury to afford morals and if you’re Cash Carraway, you choose to do what you can to survive.

Skint Estate is the hard-hitting, blunt, dignified and brutally uncovering debut memoir about impoverishment, loneliness and assault in austerity Britain – collection against a grim landscaping of kitchen sink estates, law enforcement cells, refuges and about Skint Estate: A memoir of poverty, motherhood and survival peepshows – skilfully woven right into a manifesto for transformation.

Alone, pregnant and surviving in a women’s refuge, Cash Carraway couldn’t vote in the 2010 general election that ushered austerity into Britain. Her tone of voice have been silenced. Years later, she viewed Grenfell burn off from a women’s refuge around the corner. What had changed? The vulnerable were still in the bottom of the heap, unheard. With out a stable home, without a continuous income, without family members support – how will you survive?

In Skint Estate, Cash has found her voice – loud, fresh and cutting. This is a reserve born direct from life resided in Britain below the poverty range – a brutal landscaping savaged by general credit, zero-hours contracts, increasing rents and open public service funding slashes. Told using a dark lick of humour and two-fingers up to the establishment, Cash takes us on her isolated journey from council home childhood to solitary motherhood, operating multiple jobs yet relying on food banks and short-term accommodation, all while skewering stereotypes of what it means to be functioning class.

Despite being beaten down from all angles, Money clings towards the considerations – love on her behalf daughter, community and friendships – and has woven collectively a highly charged, hilarious and guttural cry for modification.

‘Cash may be the definition of edgy, a truly distinctive tone of voice’ – Lionel Shriver, bestselling author of We Need to Talk about Kevin