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'From the scandalous, wry and blackly comic, to the reflective and deeply moving, these stories...explore the lives of families, friends and rivals with insight, economy and grace.' (Source: back cover)
Notes
With grateful love / to / Great-Aunt Nola who hopes I've written / something happy this time / and / Grand-Aunt Lois who is, quite simply, grand.
Contents
* Contents derived from the Milsons Point,North Sydney - Lane Cove area,Sydney Northern Suburbs,Sydney,New South Wales,:Vintage Australia,1998 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Five-year-old Melly is determined not to accept her father's girlfriend, Glenda. But when she runs away from her family on the beach it is Glenda who finds her and rescues her from an embarrassing situation.
The narrator is largely raised by his Aunt Ruby while his parents run the pub. When he goes away to school he quickly forgets all that Aunty Ruby had done for him, but eventually has the opportunity to reunite her with one of her lost children.
Anneliese and Roger have been married for twelve years, but the marriage has grown stale. In an attempt to revive it Roger persuades Anneliese to go away for a weekend.
Despite her protests, Belle Bergin's friend, Marj Poropat, enters Belle in the Housewife of the Year award. When Belle's house wins the Bergin-Poropat hoax is born.
When the narrator returns to his home town forty-five years after he left it he discovers that the idiosyncratic former postmistress, Dixie, is still alive. He befriends her, but when she is taken away to hospital he makes an odd discovery.
Cathy is on holiday in Portugal, where her patient husband, Robin, has taken her as a respite from her illness. Eventually she achieves a degree of resolution.
