The voice of Lucy Barton, as she writes to the reader with reflections from a New York hospital bed is astonishingly simple, humble and perfectly honest. You’ll find yourself nodding in contented agreement at every memory and observance this curious book offers up. Each one is a clean illustration, reading a little like Helen Garner’s older novels - stripped of any non-essential detail or adjective. A chapter will often be one paragraph, or even a single sentence.

With the final product weighing in at a featherish 208 pages, I’m sure the author was clinical in leaving memories on the cutting-room floor that didn’t grow the core idea of her book - the relationship between mother and daughter.

I ate it up all at once but can tell that this is one of those books that lives happily in bags and on desks and coffee tables for weeks and months being opened up and adored in whatever fleeting moments without losing its overall power. Wonderful reading.