Eddy Smallbone is grappling with identity, love, loss and religion. It's two years since he sabotaged his school life and the earthquakes felled his city. Home life is maddening and his pet-minding job is expanding in peculiar directions. And now the past and the future have come calling – in unexpected form. As Eddy navigates his way through the Christchurch suburbs in the lead up to Christmas, juggling competing responsibilities and an increasingly noisy interior world, he moves closer and closer to an overdue personal reckoning.
A richly layered novel, written with humour and pathos; a love story, peopled with flawed and comical characters, both human and animal; and a story of grief, the way its punch may leave you floundering - and how others can help you find your way back.
Tagged coming of age and New Zealand