Beyond the Break

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2007 MILES FRANKLIN AWARD

A city, a time, a love, so vividly and unerringly described you can smell the frangipani and taste the sea breeze. - Robert Drewe Steph, an Australian journalist living in New York, is devastated by the sudden death of Annie, who has been her closest friend since their shared childhood in the Sydney seaside suburb of Coogee 50 years ago. Returning to Australia at the height of a summer heatwave, Steph tries to account for the reasons behind Annie's death. At the same time, she renews her relationship with the man once loved by both friends, finding herself confronted by questions of family, friendship, and fundamental rivalries never properly resolved or even acknowledged. In a wonderfully bittersweet tale of female friendship, lost loves, mothers and daughters, and the secrets that can unfurl within families, Hall explores the past and the surprises it can reveal to haunting effect. Evoking suburban Sydney of the 1950s with astonishing clarity, Hall also recreates the opportunistic mood of 1980s Australia, in which Steph struggles to deal with conflicts she thought she had long since left behind.