First published 2022
Alice Armstrong watches her world collapse when her family abandons New York for Australia in the early 1970s. The Armstrongs settle into an elegant house overlooking Sydney Harbour, but their privileged exterior masks deeper fractures. Alice feels stranded at what seems like the world's edge, struggling to build a meaningful life from the fragments around her. The family's new existence becomes a carefully constructed illusion. Alice encounters a collection of morally questionable people, each lost in their own fabricated reality. She must distinguish truth from the elaborate deceptions that surround her, including those she tells herself. The glittering harbour setting mirrors the seductive but false promises of their transplanted life. Alice's journey becomes one of learning to see clearly through the beautiful lies that define her family's Australian dream.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Australia, New York, Sydney Harbour
Period: 1970s
124 pages · Hardcover · Tablo Tales