By Diana Evans

Diana Evans’s first novel opens in what seems like familiar territory: North London in the 1980s, a loveably eccentric mixed-race family, even a pair of identical twins. The parallels between this and Zadie Smith’s debut are hard to ignore; nor do her publishers seem shy of pointing them out. Fortunately, the author’s voice is strong enough to withstand the comparison.

The twins, in this instance, are Georgia and Bessi, growing up in Neasden with their beautiful Nigerian mother Ida, their irascible Derbyshire-born father Aubrey, and a brace of siblings. The bonds of twinship are strengthened by the girls’ awareness that the family may at any point be pulled apart by a combination of Aubrey’s drunken outbursts and Ida’s strangeness.

The likelihood or otherwise of their parents divorcing is one of the things that the sisters discuss in the sanctum of “26a” — the attic bedroom they share, which is for them a kind of “extra dimension . . . where the world multiplied and exploded because it was the sum of two people”.

This self-protective closeness is undermined when, on an extended visit to Nigeria, Georgia is the victim of a sexual assault, and, rather than confide in Bessi, chooses to keep her shameful secret to herself. This is the start of a gradual breakdown of the relationship, and the start of a growing instability in Georgia.

On the surface, the sisters’ lives are conventional enough. Bullies are faced down at school, boyfriends acquired, new fashions experimented with. Much of this is conveyed in a comic, even knockabout, style, which mingles street slang with a whimsical lyricism. But underlying it all is a darker strain — and it is that which gives the novel its piquancy.

The perceptiveness and humour with which Evans describes the pains of growing up is one of the best things about this book; another is the inventiveness of the language. Egged on by bolder schoolfriends on a shoplifting spree, the twins “bit scaredy-cat lips with chicken teeth. They touched eyes. Shrinking.” Georgia in an electric-blue fish-tail skirt resembles “a flashy mermaid”.

Unlike White Teeth, this novel attempts no overview of contemporary society through its portrayal of family life, but it doesn’t overreach itself, either. This is a satisfying book, full of energy and charm.