Nicole Abadie

She talks to lots of people who have had similar experiences.

She looks at modern culture, at literature and at TV as to how people with disabilities or more particularly with imperfections are portrayed.

She makes a couple of interesting points.

One is that women who are missing body parts

have a better chance of being portrayed as sexually attractive than women with scars.

That's just one of the many gems that emerges from this very thoughtful, smart consideration of how it feels to live in this world when your looks are less than perfect.

I haven't, but I heard her interviewed and thought I'd be very keen to get hold of that book.

Yeah.

As a child of the 70s, I'll be really looking forward to reading that, Cassie, and it might have some parallels with Richard Glover's book, The Land Before Avocado.

I'd have to start with a book by Trent Dalton, who's an Australian journalist.

His book is called Boy Swallows Universe.

Tell us why you like it.

I absolutely loved this book.

It's set in the suburbs of Brisbane in the mid-1980s.

It's written in the voice of a young man, 13-year-old guy, Eli Bell, whose mother and stepfather are small-time suburban drug dealers.

That sounds pretty dark, and so does the fact that his best friend is a man who's a convicted criminal.

But in fact, it's a book that's filled with joy and light and love.

What I love more than anything else is the character of Eli Bell.

To me, he should take his place as one of the great teenage protagonists in Australian literature.

I think the voice is authentic, it's new.