Graham's atmospheric drama may be confined, small scale and undeviating, but it’s universal in theme and big in humanity.
Shell is a 17-year-old living with her laconic father at a remote garage in the Scottish Highlands. In a bleak, brutal and forbidding landscape, Shell yearns for more than cooking meals, filling petrol tanks and fitful conversations with passing drivers. She’s bright, hugely curious, but emotionally immature and gauche – she asks people their names, about their lives, whether they’re married – and she can’t leave. She loves and cares for her dad, who’s epileptic and has regular seizures. It’s not much of a life, and they both know it.
