First published 2020
A threatening man takes up residence with a mother and her two teenage children in late 1970s Australia. He establishes an illegal auto repair business behind their house. The daughter responds to his presence with deliberate silence, refusing to engage with this unwelcome intruder. Her resistance escalates from passive defiance to active destruction. She targets what she knows matters most to him: the mechanical heart of his vehicles. Their conflict plays out across Australia's vast interior highways. The girl wages her war through calculated acts of mechanical vandalism, striking at the engines where she believes his soul resides. Tiffany examines how a young woman claims agency in a world that treats her as incomplete. The novel asks whether girls must remain fragments of themselves or can forge their own wholeness.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, passive-resistance
Setting: Australia
Period: 1970s
Paperback
Content warnings: violence