Danny knows his family is not poor because they have not one, but two tea towels. His mam never learned to cook, so Danny has to do his best. The family lives on the edge of legality, monitored by both police and social services. Life in a fishing port on the east coast in the 1960s is not easy.

Aided by the local grocer, Danny takes an illegal job working at the newly opened Chinese restaurant and discovers a passion for cooking. However, he finds it hard to combine his barely functioning family life with his ambitions as a chef; fighting to protect his clever brother, idle sister and prostitute mother, while his father looks after no one but himself.

Inspired by Leo Tolstoy's series of semi-biographical vignettes, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth is a classic coming-of-age novel, cast in a rarely documented setting in the voice of a rarely heard narrator.