A fat, brown stickleback nosed the canal bank just below the surface. Tot stretched face down on the gravel tow-path. Hold my legs! she told the boy and edged the bamboo fishing net out slowly across the oily water. You can t chase a fish, she whispered. You have to decide where he wants to go, and then wait for him there. She held the net steady. The fish glided backwards an inch, turned once, then swam into the net s pink nylon mesh." Tot is good at watching, waiting and working things out. And there s a lot that demands close attention: her own epilepsy, an older sister who never wants to play anymore, a best friend who s changed her name to Roger, and a girl across the road with a star entry in the Stanley Close Spy Club notebook for doing it with a gypsy man. And then to crown it all, her dad has dreams of New Orleans. Sticklebacks and Snowglobes is a story of tangled destinies unravelled and made sense of by an eight-year-old girl called Tot, a child as yet untouched by hormones, and whose belief system is shored up by fishing nets, a healthy respect for exploding saints and faith in both the inherent goodness of people and in the way things are.