- I was disappointed in this just published novel, after a long wait since Hannan won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in January 2019.
- Elaine is the mother, Mina the daughter, Bill the father who has died. The funeral is described in microscopic, tedious detail.
- The whole premise seems rather silly: Elaine hasn’t left the family home for 12 years, since Bill's death. And she refuses to engage or even talk to her only child and daughter, Mina. So Mina goes and works in London, refusing to come back home.
- Hannan is totally obsessed with the colour pink. Everything is pink, possibly a refection of the colour of Mina's ex-boyfriend's penis. Which we meet on page one. Other colours, like green, very occasionally get a look in, but mainly it's pink. Pink.
- She's also beer obsessed. Day and night the young 20-somethings skull beers. (Although, thankfully, she uses the cliche 'drunk' only once!)
- The novel is divided into three sections - Mina, Elaine, Mina. Elaine’s section is the most interesting and compelling. After being married to Bill for two years she meets Arthur, a chef at a Chinese restaurant. She instantly falls in love with him with an intensity that's rather melodramatic. In fact it becomes a bit creepy. She engineers that she and Bill buy a house opposite Arthur and Valerie's place in suburban Melbourne. She's not unfaithful to Bill '...But somehow she knew that if she just kept waiting, everything would reveal itself. She knew that if she waited, he'd come. And that when he did, it would be worth it. All of it would be worth it'.
- Unfortunately there's little depth to this novel. It’s a simple family tale, with an interesting generational contrast between the sacred bond of marriage and sexual fidelity in the older generation and the fickleness of relationships in the current one. Mina's mother and grandmother knew what love was, but Mina is still, in her early thirties grappling with the concept.
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