'In the first three paragraphs of this moving book, Sally Morgan uses the words 'hated' three times. They express a five-year old's reactions to hospital, to its smells and bare boards, to her Dad's sickness and to the whole experience of visiting her Dad in hospital. It is sad that this build up of emotion presages so forcefully the author's search for her true place in this Australia at the end of this twentieth century. Sad in that she had to make that search because of the hateful sufferings her family had been made to endure.' (Introduction)