The Returns

Elizabeth pinned a notice offering a room in Trevor's bookshop expecting some student to call, not the bookseller himself, middle-aged and newly separated. Trevor wants the place for its empty backyard shed, where he could return to the painting he gave up years ago. Elizabeth, a sharp-tongued, solitary editor who cannot recognise faces and drives an old EH Holden, takes him in on probation. The past keeps coming back for both of them. Her mother, who once abandoned the family to follow the Rajneesh movement, is now frail and has started hoarding, while Trevor's Polish father, missing for thirty years and legally dead, turns up at the shop wanting cash. Living under one roof in North Melbourne, the two become friends, with the hint that it could become something more.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

336 pages in the original

Set in

Australia

First published

2019

Author's age

69 when first published

ISBN

9781925760262 (Transit Lounge, Australia)