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Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus |
| Original language | |
| English | |
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THE FAMILY STRING
A darkly funny and poignant novel by an extraordinary new voice
This is a superb coming of age story that explores a fraught mother-daughter dynamic, and the secrets adults keep from their children. It is about resilience, and the loves that sustain us when our most essential bonds are tested, and how to find the way back through hope and forgiveness.
Meet Dorcas, a spirited 12-year-old struggling to contain her irrepressible humor and naughty streak in a family of Christadelphians in 1960s Adelaide -- a deeply Christian sect that believes in living outside of mainstream culture. She is her mother's least favorite child and always at the bottom of the order on the family's string of beads which she and her siblings Ruthy and Caleb reorder according to their mother's ever-changing moods.
Dorcas, an aspiring vet, dreams of having a dog, or failing that, a guinea pig. Ruthy wants to attend writing school, and Caleb wants to play football with the local team. But Christadelphians aren't allowed to be of the world' and when their older brother Daniel is exiled to door knock and spread the good word in New South Wales after being caught making out with Esther Dawlish at youth camp, each try their hardest to suppress their dreams for a bigger life. But for a girl like Dorcas, dreams have a habit of surfacing at the most inopportune moments, and as she strives to be the daughter her mother desires, a chain of mishaps lead to a terrible tragedy that no one could have foreseen.
This novel has a warm and lively voice and explores childhood in a family defined by its religious convictions and a mother's depression, but with a saving foundation of sibling love. There is a tragedy, but Dorcas is a character who inspires a deeply emotionally satisfying response
This is a superb coming of age story that explores a fraught mother-daughter dynamic, and the secrets adults keep from their children. It is about resilience, and the loves that sustain us when our most essential bonds are tested, and how to find the way back through hope and forgiveness.
Meet Dorcas, a spirited 12-year-old struggling to contain her irrepressible humor and naughty streak in a family of Christadelphians in 1960s Adelaide -- a deeply Christian sect that believes in living outside of mainstream culture. She is her mother's least favorite child and always at the bottom of the order on the family's string of beads which she and her siblings Ruthy and Caleb reorder according to their mother's ever-changing moods.
Dorcas, an aspiring vet, dreams of having a dog, or failing that, a guinea pig. Ruthy wants to attend writing school, and Caleb wants to play football with the local team. But Christadelphians aren't allowed to be of the world' and when their older brother Daniel is exiled to door knock and spread the good word in New South Wales after being caught making out with Esther Dawlish at youth camp, each try their hardest to suppress their dreams for a bigger life. But for a girl like Dorcas, dreams have a habit of surfacing at the most inopportune moments, and as she strives to be the daughter her mother desires, a chain of mishaps lead to a terrible tragedy that no one could have foreseen.
This novel has a warm and lively voice and explores childhood in a family defined by its religious convictions and a mother's depression, but with a saving foundation of sibling love. There is a tragedy, but Dorcas is a character who inspires a deeply emotionally satisfying response
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Book
Published 2022-06-01 by Ultimo Press (Hardie Grant) |