Second-Hand Rain

I am the laugh of a kookaburra. I am a currawong. I am a galah. I am a lyre because I am a lyrebird. I am a performer and I am superb. Dark, offbeat and haunting, from the bluest Venetian lagoon where a merwoman saves a drowning gondolier to a glass harmonica playing itself on a British tideline, this innovative and perceptive collection ripples with watery memories and poetic unease. Home is never the safe place as it snapshots families set apart by betrayal, illness or death: a phantom baby growing older, a granddaughter obsessively peeling tangerines, and a deaf sister conducting music in her sleep. Sadness loses its balance, then floats adrift as a litter picker finds secrets within her wasteland, nostalgia flowers in suburban gardens, and people vanish in the fog.