Feeding Time is a hellish vision of life in an English residential home. The staff members at Green Oaks are sadistic and bullying, and its director, Cornish – disgusted by his staff and by the elderly residents – keeps his distance and spends most of his time masturbating in his office. While most residents are physically frail, they are not, however, weak in spirit. They organise revolts and fight for their dignity.

Green Oaks is home to a chaotic and disorderly microcosmic society. While outrageously comic throughout, and often verging on the surreal, the world of Feeding Time is not far enough removed from reality to provide escapism. It deals with the most uncomfortable of real-world issues, from elder abuse to grooming. Readers, as much prisoners of Biles’s world as the residents are of Green Oaks, are forced to confront the most disturbing and shameful aspects of human nature.

Feeding Time is published by Galley Beggar Press (£8.99). Click here to buy it for £7.37