AustLit

'A small pair of hands taken from a grave will always hold the most treasured Christmas memory, writes Carmel Bird.'

'By default, a sound biography becomes a potted ­history of the decades of its setting. It is also a record of the fading and flourishing mindsets, fashions and technologies of the time. Readers of a certain generation will fondly recall the Kodak Box Brownie camera with its convex rectangular window and the concentrated delight of collecting a modest, brown-paper envelope of photos from the local chemist a few days later. The black-and-white results were more often than not lopsided, out of focus and sometimes cut off people’s heads.' (Introduction)