Debut book from Zoe Norton Lodge, Writer and Presenter on ABC's The Checkout, Co-founder of Story Club
Zoe Norton Lodge is an outstanding talent and the very brightest of rising stars on the Australian creative landscape. She's so excellent that I'm even willing to write wanky things like that for things like this. Julian Morrow, The Chaser.
Zoe Norton Lodge grew up in Annandale, Sydney in the eighties and nineties. God's country. Heartland of the Inner West. Because of its location an always fertile mix of working-class, migrant, genteel, intellectual and eccentric residents. As she got older she noticed Annandale was changing, and she started hearing new words like 'architect' and 'labradoodle', and eventually entire weeks would go by with no backyard bomb explosions.
These stories about neighbourhood warfare, wacky relatives, quashed dreams and facial disfigurement are told with Norton Lodge's characteristic comic verve and eye for absurdity and menace, inspired by her family, friends, acquaintances and nemeses.
Their highlights include Greek grandparents who have lived in mutual resentment for decades and beat each other up with colanders, children who dabble in amateur porn and are sent to school with cat-food sandwiches, 'distressed' furniture, rampaging eczema, flying babies and other suburban wonders.
