AustLit

'A woman grapples with survivor’s guilt after a body is found in her garden bed: an ageing beauty queen contemplates her past: a world champion free-diver disappears during routine training…

'In moments disquieting or quietly inspiring, this collection considers the complexity of the connections we make — with our family, friends and neighbours, and with those met briefly or never at all.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Even as I bring the clippers down towards the soft dome of my head, all I can think about is how badly I do not want to do this.

'I think of Josephine and how tiny she looked, swaddled in mounds of heavy, starched white sheets on her hospital bed. It is the only thing that keeps me from putting the clippers down. Josephine, who as a child, I felt I loved so fiercely that I wanted to squeezed her until her head popped clean off;  who was like a life-sized doll to me and a pain in the bum all at once. Josephine, who I once dreamed had died in a fiery race-car crash, which woke me up screaming, only to remember that neither of us could drive. My tiny, perfect sister, lying bald and infant-like in a bed that was far too big for her, pinned to the spot with the pain of movement like one of Nabokov;s butterflies in a frame.' (Introduction)