'Coburg, Melbourne. Ford McCullen is growing up with his mother Deidre and his Pop and Noonie in 'The Compound', a pair of units in the shadow of Pentridge prison. His father, Robert, has left them to live in the bush with his new male partner. Nobody is coping.
'When Ford's paternal grandmother Queenie's good fortune allows him to attend a prestigious Catholic private school on the other side of the river and to learn the violin, Ford finds himself balancing separate identities. At school he sees himself being moulded into an image that is not his own, something at odds with the rough and tumble of his beloved north.
'Crumbling under the weight of his family's expectations and realising that he just might be the only adult amongst them, Ford embarks on a quest for meaning while navigating the uncomfortable realities of his father's life, his mother's ongoing crisis, and the pillars of football and religion, delving ever deeper into a fraught search for the source of the 'McCullen curse'.
'Everything in its Right Place tackles themes of class, love and sexuality with humour, truth and grit. It is a story of the legacies and dilemmas that families bring, of how we all must find our own way, astonishingly told.' (Publication summary)
Dedication :
To my only family - Mum, Nanma and Pa.
And for Coburg.
So much beauty; so much love.
Epigraph :
'As I get older I put more trust in what happened, which has a profound meaning if you can get at it. But what you invent is important, too. Flaubert said that whatever you invent is true, even though you may not understand what the truth of it is.'
-William Maxwell
'With the letting down of this final barrier between myself and the truth I seemed to welcome back those images which used to throng my mind.'
-Anita Brookner, Look at Me.
'The insistence by so many Australians that we don’t have a society segregated by class has always been blatantly untrue, and the pandemic has only underlined this. Two new titles from small independent Melbourne press Transit Lounge gaze upon Australia’s social strata.' Introduction)
'The insistence by so many Australians that we don’t have a society segregated by class has always been blatantly untrue, and the pandemic has only underlined this. Two new titles from small independent Melbourne press Transit Lounge gaze upon Australia’s social strata.' Introduction)