'When I went off to college I started telling people that my mother died in a car crash.'

Ellie and Izzy have lived a life with a mother they adored. Taking them for long midnight baths or dancing in the dark in the rain, she's been a magical, colourful figure.

Now, on the eve of her forty-first birthday, Izzy realises that she's about to reach the year her mother never got beyond. Her father and sister are flying out for an emotionally charged weekend visit, and Izzy can't help feeling that she's still responsible, that there are apologies to be made. Surely now she's at an age where a grown-up daughter can put things behind her?

Like her bestselling novel The Abortionist's Daughter, Elisabeth Hyde's Crazy as Chocolate dwells on the fragile yet binding relationship between a mother and her daughters. It is an enchanting novel of an idyllic, wild childhood and of two girls who, in spite of everything, love the woman who gave them life.