Anne Bogle

You mentioned in talking about the Steingart that kids are hard to write well.

Swiv has such a sass and character without feeling obnoxious like sometimes adults write kids, which makes it, at least for this reader, it's easy to trust Taze as a writer.

Swiv's mother is a pregnant actress

She is not as much in the picture as the other women in the family.

She's mostly described coming and going.

But she is a big personality.

Like all the women in this family have big personalities.

There is a background of mental illness that the family is talking around that feels really scary to some people in the family.

So there is definitely pain and sadness here and frustration.

The father's gone.

That's discussed as a big thing.

gap and there's like a bit of a question as to why for much of the story but there is definitely hope the grandma makes at least one speech about like joy and how important it is when times are hard and this has a really lovely wrap up at the end not all like pat tied in a bow but it feels really fitting it's darkly funny I mean there aren't a lot of books around like this one how's this sounding that sounds amazing

I'm glad to hear it.

And then finally, I wouldn't be surprised if you'd pick this up, but have you read Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard devotional?

This one has a broodier tone where we talked about the Ada Calhoun nonfiction and Miriam Taze's Fight Night.

Both of those feel like brighter and brasher.

And this one is definitely moodier.

It's slim.

It was shortlisted for the Booker.

It's Australian.