In this sensitive exploration of memory, love and family, John Clanchy's writing reaches new levels of insight while retaining its distinctive humour.

Vera, Miriam, Laura - one family, three generations, with Miriam at the centre. Her mother Vera is slipping into the shadows of Alzheimer's disease, and her teenage daughter Laura is embroiled in her own conflicts of identity and sexuality.

John Clanchy explores the dilemmas and tough choices confronting Miriam as she struggles to balance the conflicting demands of family, marriage and work. The decisions she must face in caring for her mother are sharpened by her concern that she is motivated not by love, but by a cruel and scrupulous duty.

The novel poses broader questions as well, questions about society at large and its moral responsibility to the displaced and discarded in its midst - the migrant and refugee women whom Miriam teaches and from whom, unexpectedly, she draws the strength and resiliance to come to terms with her own personal crisis.

"Clanchy explores the big questions like love, death, betrayal and loss with a rare toughness and an even rarer insight... He is a highly accomplished writer."

Mark Henshaw, Canberra Times.

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