Cirrus@Austlit

'It's 1961, AND the kids of the baby boom are rapidly outgrowing old nests. On the eastern edge of Melbourne's suburbs, orchards and dirt roads are giving way to brick veneer and asphalt, with new houses going up fast on quarter-acre blocks bulldozed down to the bare smooth clay. At 6 Irving Court, Vermont, the window frames have just been put in: my mother, standing in what will be the marital bedroom, leans her hands against the sill and smiles out towards my father taking yet another photo with his Kodak Brownie. A big, eye-crinkling smile, with a hint of triumph. For the first time, my parents will be living in a house they actually own, and both have convinced themselves it'll heal the rifts in their thirteen-year marriage.' (Publication abstract)

'I'm a lucky woman, thinks Susanna Greenfield. And why wouldn't she? Her handsome, successful husband is a loving father to their two teenage children. Her mother is her dearest friend, and her scatty but adored younger sister seems to have finally found some stability in her life. Susanna has a solid career as an art teacher, and if, as she's recently discovered, there's a hole inside her where her creative spirit used to be - is that really such a big price to pay?

'But beneath the carefully maintained surface, seismic forces are at work. Fault lines are forming, not only in Susanna, but within each beloved member of her family. In a single, tragically ill-judged moment, the fabric it has taken a lifetime to construct can be torn apart.

'Human frailties, and the power of the ties that bind us: this is Kate Veitch's territory, explored with characteristic warmth and honesty in her absorbing portrait of a family thrown into crisis.' (From the publisher's website.)

'On Christmas Eve in 1967, a London woman unhappily transplanted to the Australian suburbs makes a decision that will change forever the lives of her four young children.

'Forty years on, those children are adept at concealing their shared pain. Deborah has a demanding political career, James is a successful artist, Robert a respected school principal. Only Meredith, the baby of the family seems struck. But as their father begins to lose his grip on reality, they find themselves floundering in an unfamiliar sea. And their past is about to reach into the present in ways that will shock and challenge them all.' (Publisher's blurb)