Extracts

My earworm for today is ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ by the Boomtown Rats.

Saskia Honeyman would look back on her mother’s death and see that it had the cadence of an exquisitely orchestrated sonata.

I have hated my mother for most of my life but it is her face I see as I drown.

Tommy Stojack.

My grave is open.

People don’t tap their watches anymore; have you noticed?

He’s got to want it more than I do.

In 2019 I was invited to appear on ABC TV’s Australian Story to talk about my life.

Ammy’s fingers curl around the bottle in her blazer pocket.

New Zealand was greener than Emilia could ever have imagined.

The dining table was set for a feast, but all the carving knives had been hidden.

When I met Caitlin, there was no question that she had a dream.

Chapter One ROCK AND ROLL

Lampana, South Australia, January 1944

That was the summer they wore flip-flops.

Mack jogged back to the main track following the sound, which seemed to be coming from a stand of bushes to the left of the path where a second track speared into the scrub.

We need your art.

Hazel Bates arrives on the docks to the sight of a dead body being hauled out of the water.

Today is the tenth anniversary of the worst day of my life.

God created man and demon.

Am I cursed? Or just messed up? What is wrong with me? Why do bad things always happen to me? Am I unlucky or just damaged goods? Who will ever want me . . . an uneducated, broken, Latina from the ’hood?

Why are there no relationship classes in high school?

"What is it about thirty that makes us all flip out?"

As Lou widened her eyes with mischievous pleasure and blew him a kiss over the heads of other customers in the gelato bar, Jack smiled at her delight.