'Rocks in the Belly tells the story of an eight-year-old boy and the adult he becomes. When he is young his mother fosters boys, despite the jealous turmoil it arouses in her son: jealousy that reaches unmanageable proportions when she fosters Robert, a child she can't help bonding with. As the connection between them grows, the son's envy triggers an event that profoundly changes everyone. Especially Robert.
'At twenty-eight, still haunted by his childhood, the son returns to face his mother, who is now chronically ill. He hasn't forgiven her for what happened to Robert, and yet she isn't the same domineering woman anymore. Now she's the dependent one and he the dominant force - a power he can't help but abuse.
'Written in two startlingly original voices, Rocks in the Belly is about the effortless destruction we wreak on one another in the simple pursuit of our own happiness, and a reminder that we never leave our childhood behind. A fast-paced, powerful, yet often beautiful and funny novel.' (From the publisher's website.)
'Stories—fictional, biographical, and autobiographical—are one way in which we can imagine what it has been like to experience foster care in Australia. In this paper I look at the trends in stories told about foster care from the nineteenth century, across the twentieth, and into the early twenty-first century. While exploring these trends, I make some observations about the shift from fictional accounts where foster parents and foster children were heroic characters to often searing tales of hurt and trauma inflicted on children in foster care by violent women and men.'
Source: Abstract.
