From the 1989 Australian/Vogel Literary Award Winner comes an immediately engaging novel-in-stories, written in a deceptively simple style. It tells the story of Rose, three or four years old as the novel opens, a teenager as it ends. Rose loves the beach, her sister, her mother. Most of all, she loves her Dad, and Dad's music. But too few people want to hear him, and sometimes Rose and Wanda and Mum have to fit uncomfortably into other people's lives. Mandy Sayer uncovers the powerlessness of a child with an entirely steady hand. Her social observations are often bleak, yet she draws the reader into a deep and lasting involvement with all her characters, and especially with the feisty, irrestibile Rose."