Suneeta Peres da Costa’s debut poetry collection moves through Goan and Indian histories, suburban Sydney, family, friendship, grief and illness. 

Its title deliberately worries at the biblical prodigal-son story. She moves between lyric, narrative, dramatic and prose-poem forms to do so, with an especially tactile way of making history material. Her fruit, hair, beads, scars, plants, bodies, houses and food carry cultural memory without being reduced to symbols for it.

“Low-hanging Fruit,” for instance, crashes corporate language into a memory of stealing green mangoes with a loved one; elsewhere Hindu and Catholic imagery, samskāra, colonial histories and contemporary Australian landscapes fold into one another. Throughout, acts of cutting, displacement and violence are countered by recurring gestures of suturing, mending and preservation. It is poetry about diaspora without treating diaspora as a clean identity category: belonging is something continually made, damaged, remembered and remade. 

Giramondo Publishing Company, Artarmon, NSW, 2024. First edition, first printing. Paperback. Very light shelf wear; internally clean and unmarked. Near fine condition.