Self Help is a complex and engrossing novel.

A returned Soviet émigré, Maria Glover, is found dead in her St Petersburg flat by her son. He has flown out at short notice to answer her intriguing call of distress.

In the aftermath of Maria's passing, the Glover family secrets and stories start to come to light. The tentacles of these stories stretch from St Petersburg to London, Paris and New York as Maria's family have flown the nest and made, generally, unsuccessful and unfulfilling lives for themselves.