Cirrus@Austlit

Jack Cornock’s medical condition, of which his obstinate silence is supposedly a symptom, manages to fan speculation within the families of his two marriages on the revised terms of his last will. After twenty years in Rome, Jack’s only kindred daughter, Sylvia, is making what she intends to be her last visit to her native Sydney; and although she is unaware of her father's physical decline she is thought to have mercenary motives. Because of her father’s aspirations on behalf of country and kin, Sylvia is reluctantly caught up in these thickening skeins of estrangement and the inevitable revival of an earlier, foiled liaison. Her repressed discontentments bursting at the seams, she strikes out at the discontinuity and parochialisms of her country in a compelling blend of sympathy, pathos and expatriate objectivity. The Impersonators is a freshly crafted and supremely modern novel detailing with humour and outstanding perception the fracturing of family relationships and the endurance of love in an increasingly materialistic age.