Alex can't drive, he drinks and smokes too much, and dances naked to Nina Simone in his caravan in the back yard. Despair drove him away, but love's brought him back - the cancer that's crawling through his mother's body like ants on a white bread sandwich is going to kill her. The doctors have given her two years.
Going back to the house in which you grew up is never easy. Memories, welcome and unwelcome, threaten to overwhelm. So it is with Alex. Growing up in a house full of siblings - fostered, adopted, step and blood - is difficult at the best of times, but it's doubly hard when you've got a stepfather you hate, buckteeth that could eat an apple through a picket fence, an all-too acute sense of melodrama, and you're a Brisbane boy who wants to be Maid Marian.
Funny, affectionate and heartfelt, David Kelly's first novel is a rare celebration of that most complicated and intriguing structure: the family.
