Inside Grandad (by Peter Dickinson)

But as the weeks go by, despite visiting Grandad every day, working with the physiotherapist, spending hours talking to him and reading to him, nothing seems to be changing except Gavin, who's growing increasingly exhausted, hopeless and desperate, and increasingly certain that the key to unlocking the prison of Grandad's mind has something to do with the selkies he loved to talk about.

There is magic in the world, lurking in the hidden spaces of the ordinary, in the mysterious connections between one person and another, subtle, shy, brought forth by the power of emotion, gone so quickly it can always be rationalized away. Peter Dickinson knows it beyond the shadow of a doubt.

He brings the magic into high relief by keeping the story so relentlessly real. Every character is complex, imperfect, and utterly believable. The course of the stroke, the ambulance, the hospital, nurses, physiotherapists, the effects on the family -- all are firmly grounded in reality, as is the ending, in which there are no satisfying but unbelievable miracles, only the tiniest hints of genuine hope. In this slim book, lightly touched by magic and likely to bring tears on more than one occasion, it is Gavin's unshakable devotion to his Grandad that is the most realistic, and magical, of all.