AustLit

'From the award-winning author of Mad Meg (winner of the 1995 Australian National Book Council's Banjo Award) comes Window Gods, a brilliant, incisive work of art that tackles the big issues on a broad canvas: juggling the responsibilities of family whilst carving out some space for the self; the responsibilities of womanhood; negotiating the role of the mother - bringing together the pieces of a fractured life into a productive whole. 56 year old Isobel is an artist struggling to engage deeply with her subject matter while the responsibilities of womanhood tug her in all directions - her ancient mother, her son and her late sister's daughter. When a law suit brought by her half sister and her husband's cancer diagnosis collide, Isobel is thrown from one crisis to the next. Then her son disappears in Afghanistan. In a situation resembling a global Middlemarch, Isobel sets off to find her son. The journey takes her away from her ailing mother to Afghanistan, where on her journey she finds courage in friendship and new horizons. Strengthened and empowered, Isobel comes home to the bushfire season and her mother's last, hilarious days as she prepares to meet her God.

'Window Gods is about family, inheritance and change. Making sense of where you are and making sense of life in the absence of a single authority, or any of the old gods. Full of astute observations about life, death and everything in between it's a wry, funny and intelligent look at modern life – in all its glory.' (Publication summary)