Fabulous Fiction Firsts #252 - Fathers Found and Lost

Sun, 04/03/2011 - 5:37pm by muffy

Former Joffrey II ballet dancer Meg Howrey impresses reviewers with her debut Blind Sight.

Earnestly nice and innocent 17 year-old Luke Prescott grew up in a bohemian household surrounded by women. Then the father (a TV star) he never knew invites him to spend a summer in L.A. The two share some adventures but Luke finds out just a little more than he wants to know about this stranger, which in turn forces his mother to revealing some shattering secrets of her own.

Meg Howrey gives us "a smart, funny, and deeply moving story about truth versus belief, and what makes, and might break, a family".

Cate Kennedy won the 2010 New South Wales Premier's People's Choice (Literary) Award with her debut novel The World Beneath * * .

15-year-old Sophie accompanies her father on a backpacking trip through Tasmania in the hopes of establishing a bond with the father she’s never known. 25 years ago, her now estranged parents were part of the successful protest movement to save Tasmania's Franklin River. Sophie - sullen and stubborn, and Rich - hopelessly overconfident, soon find themselves severely unprepared for the arduous terrain and punishing weather.

"In elegant, fluidly written prose, Kennedy not only delivers scathing portraits of the ineffectual adults and the times that shaped them but also makes the epic wilderness another vividly rendered character in the story. A gripping debut."

* * = Starred reviews