The Happiness Glass explores the imaginative terrain between essays and short fiction. The narrative takes us from remote NSW to New Zealand and England through a series of deeply affecting experiences of poverty, domestic violence, loneliness, infertility, adoption, and grief. Her writing is sharp, moving, insightful and beautifully poetic. Burning With Madame Bovary begins with a precocious reader who wants to study French and Latin, but instead she is pushed to the typing pool and learning shorthand. This essay records the tentative emergence of a writer, while the remaining essays explore the complex griefs of homesickness, inter-country adoption, and family estrangement. The fictional character Lily Brennan appears at points from childhood to old age, allowing the writer to navigate some of the problems of autobiographical writing, while adding layers of meaning to the unfolding life.
