AustLit

'A dark, funny and subversive memoir about surviving the very worst that life can throw at you, Rosie Waterland's story of her coming of age is a blackly comic Australian memoir for our times and a clarion call for all anti-cool girls everywhere.

'Rosie Waterland is the survivor of one of the most appalling childhoods since Augusten Burroughs. There were rehab stays and AA meetings. There were overdoses, dramas, suicide attempts. There were narrow escapes from drug dealers, not to mention a numerous round of dodgy men in and out of her mother's life. They endlessly moved houses, countries, schools, squats. There was neglect, endless DOCS workers and the occasional abusive foster parent. Rosie and her sisters became Mormon, Catholic, Wiccan, Christian. There was a second marriage and divorce. Rosie watched as her dad passed out/was arrested/vomited/cried. There were frustrated family members with no time for kids. Rosie had to talk her mum out of killing herself and watched as her dad's coffin was lowered into the ground.

'But Rosie is far more than the sum of her parts.

'The quality that lies at the heart of Rosie's appeal is her straight-up, unaffected directness - her ability to say what she really thinks, to call it as she sees it. She's kind of an Everygirl. the Anti-Cool Girl that we all want to be. She's funny, honest and inspirational. She is our Caitlin Moran, our very own Lena Dunham, and she will tell a uniquely Australian story, in only the way that a straight-talking Australian girl can say it.' (Publication summary)