Cirrus@Austlit

'Joy Williams - Janaka Wiradjuri - was a difficult personality, and she made herself so. This book explains how and why she, and so many other people like her never had a chance.

Moving from Joy's untimely death in a Primbee flat, to the ten years she spent pursuing a negligence claim against the NSW Government, through two lost appeals and on to the beginning of her life, Read takes us on a mesmerising and evocative journey that offers a rare historical insight into institutions, street life and indigenous and urban culture between 1942 and 2006.

Written in a poignant new biographical style of writing, Read uses direct speech to dramatise the work - often employing Joy's own words and incorporating many of her poems throughout the novel to confront the reader with a dynamic depth of narrative.' (From the publisher's website.)