AustLit

'The first owner Vincenzo Polamo, a Calabrian, builds the Ozone Café with his builder-brother in 1957 in a fictional town, north of Sydney. He meets three children, Winifred, Casey, and Nicolas, creating a seascape mural on a café wall that includes shells that belonged to the children. Even with the success of his Australian cuisine, the introduction of games machines and jukeboxes, the cafe becomes hard work for Vincenzo, and because his wife is unwilling to migrate to Australia, he sells the café.

'The second owners are Joe Pendlebury and his wife Shirley. When structural damage appears on the courtyard wall after a violent storm, Joe completely ignores the problem while experiencing health issues, too few customers and theft by his two boarders. The damaged wall which is close to the mural concerns Winifred who wants to keep Vincenzo’s artwork sacred after Nicolas dies of muscular dystrophy. In suspicious circumstances Joe goes missing for a long period of time forcing Shirley to sell the café.

'The third owners Con & Dion Lasaridis experience problems with the damaged wall. Unable to convince the Heytesbury Shire that the café is sound after a rebuild, they lose ownership in the courts due to the Shire’s claims of subsidence, inadequate land preparation, an unrevoked Demolition Order and that the building is hazardous to the general public. Con & Dion believe this action belies the undercurrent of council corruption and their aim to obtain the land for expansion.

'The Ozone Café is an exploration of power and control and of those who survive the most powerless of unfair situations. The café, just as fragile as the people who inhabit it, tells the story of how business owners can be unprepared and unaware of the political chicanery happening behind the scenes. The novel also highlights the migrant struggle, the comradery necessary in a small town, the life, faults and aspirations of people in a seaside community and of a tragic architectural loss. ' (Publication summary)

'An Australian National law has been passed and a group known as the Asbestos Task Force (A.T.F.) is formed by the government to systematically remove all known asbestos from towns, cities and suburbs. The city of Perth, Western Australia and surrounds have undergone this removal, and gradually the task force spreads further afield into the South West. Their target has reached Farmbridge, an old pioneer town with numerous asbestos houses and buildings. Newly married, May and Isaac who plan to renovate their home, an old Girl Guide Hall, experience the imminent threat of losing their home after receiving their fateful letter. Believing their home is not made from asbestos, the couple set out on a relentless quest to save the hall from demolition.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Helen Hagemann’s lines crackle with the energy of an arch observer. Although she often looks back, her nostalgia is an honest squaring with the world that never lets metaphor too easily ‘glaze’ a thing. And what a dense material world it is. These poems burst with a dazzling record of things that both tenderly and wryly evoke other decades and, in doing so, other ways of living. Her uncompromising yet generous eye balances an openness to fragility with the ‘red combustion of our lives’. - LUCY DOUGAN' (Publication summary)