'Happy families are not always conventional. Conventional families are not always happy. A panorama in miniature of contemporary'Australian life in which different worlds connect and collide: city and country, 'old' Europe and 'new' Australia, black and white Australians and male and female values.
'A warm and compelling novel about women's lives, the past and its secrets and the different shapes families can take.' (Publication summary)
Epigraph: What else should our lives be but a series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of unconsciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become. - David Malouf.
