AustLit

'After the doc's we take a walk round the park like we always do. It's cold and the pond is fuckin filthy, full of ice and dirt and shit. When Aaron was a kid he asked me what happened to the ducks when the water froze over. Did they get trapped under the ice and die? I had no idea, so I told him they went on holidays to Bali.' (Introduction)

'Mildred was only six when she met Death, but she wasn’t afraid.

'He looked nothing like the pictures. He wasn’t a skeleton in a dark robe or a gaunt figure wielding a shining silver pennant (she hadn’t yet learned the word scythe). Instead he wore a ragged but serviceable coat and carried a leather briefcase, and looked a little bit like her father and grandfather and Mr Makras, the lion-voiced librarian at her school, all rolled into one. If Mildred had ever known her mother, Death might have looked a little something like her too.' (Publication abstract)