Many thanks to Ros for this recommendation which sounds lovely.
Am adding in a few optional extras which sound brilliant and will hopefully get me off the screens for a while after a wet winter: What's for Dinner (sounds insightful, Aidan!), Isn't It Nice We Hate the Same Things (you won me with the title, Anna!), and House of Kwa.
I'm also keen to read The Catalpa but let's see how it goes.
Google Reads informs us:
"'Tenderfoot is magnificent. Deeply moving. Beautiful. Powerful' TRENT DALTON
By the bestselling, award-winning author of Addition, an exhilarating novel about coming of age in 1970s Australia
Wait for the boxes to open, wait for the race to begin. Wait, and your greyhound will cease to be the dog you know and become an entirely different kind of animal.
Brisbane, 1975: Andie Tanner's world is small but whole. Her mum is complicated, but she adores her dad and the kennel of racing greyhounds that live under their house. Andie is a serious girl with plans: finish school with her friends, then apprentice to her father until she can become a greyhound trainer, with dogs of her very own.
But real life rarely goes to plan, and the world is bigger and more complicated than Andie could imagine. When she loses everything she cares about - her family, her friends, the dogs - it's up to Andie to reclaim her future. She will need all her wits to survive this new reality of secrets and half-truths, addictions and crime.
With luminous, aching prose, Tenderfoot will move you like no other story this year."
Also: the Totally Lit Festival is on in Fremantle during early October, concluding this weekend. I highly recommend taking a look, there's lots of great events listed and you'll see me there!
