AustLit

'When Melissa Fagan stands before the famed McWhirters building in Valley Corner, she tries ‘to decipher what this immutable object, this icon, means to the city and me’, but finds that ‘the building is in my way’ (2018: 8). In this book, she tries to move beyond the Art Deco department store to examine the lives and work of the women who were connected to it by blood and marriage. Weaving together research, reportage, imagined lives and personal memoir, she illuminates the impact of wealth, social expectations and loss across five generations of women.' (Introduction)