Remembrance

Queensland in the 1940s... and in shops and factories, people spoke anxiously of imminent invasions. But not everyone was worried. To a heedless seven-year-old girl the great conflict was no more than a distant rumbling from beyond the world's rim.

She lived, still, in a land of enchantments: the leafy schoolyard where swings creaked... the steaming rainforest bright with parrots...

The girl's universe was secure, governed by certitudes. At its centre was her father, a man like no other, quiet, remote and brilliant. In whose benign shadow she grew into adolescence. Only then did she become aware of his horrifying illness: a sickness whose seeds had been present from the seemingly idyllic beginning.

' In writing that seems to move without effort from detail to detail, Faith Richmond has captured a girlhood, a family and a whole era of Australian life.'
Barry Oakley

"This is some of the freshest Australian autobiographical writing that I've read."
Penelope Nelson, Weekend Australian