Cirrus@Austlit

'In Kafka’s unfinished story ‘The Burrow’, a badger-like creature recounts its increasingly paranoid efforts to defend its home against invasion. In Melanie Cheng’s novel of the same name, disaster has already invaded the home with the sudden death of six-month-old Ruby. Four years on, Jin, Amy and their remaining daughter, Lucie, persist in a holding pattern of barely suppressed grief. Their estrangement is reflected in the fractured structure of the novel, in which the task of narration passes, moment to moment, from one family member to another, producing an elaborate mosaic of secrets and facades.' (Introduction)