Set partly in rural Italy and partly within the drifting emotional terrain of contemporary Australia, the novel tracks the narrator moving through the many shapes of mourning.

Beech writes in a sparse, observant register that allows emotional recognition to emerge sideways, through domestic detail, awkward conversations, shared routines, bodily exhaustion; the means to show a body mid-recalibration. The prose has that particular contemporary Australian literary quality where emotional devastation is filtered through practicality and restraint, but beneath it sits a deep concern with dependency, care, loneliness, and the fragility of the identities people build around relationships.

There’s also a strong undercurrent of displacement running through the novel. Italy is not treated as fantasy escape or transformative travel destination, but instead is a place the narrator tries to test whether grief can be outrun, aestheticised, or reorganised into a different kind of life. 

Published by Allen & Unwin in 2022. Paperback edition in very good condition, with light shelf wear and clean internal pages.