A tragedy at a summer playscheme steers this restrained novel set in contemporary Australia. As it explores the nature of grief and how we strive to remember those we have lost, the story is by turns sad, suspenseful, but never sentimental.
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She tries to go further into the memory, to be back there with the hard school bench beneath her legs and no knowledge of being without him. It was perfect then and she hadn't known it. She tries to go further but she can't get him to turn. Turn and smile and fly towards her, as he would at the end of every day. She can't get the bell to ring and the children to scatter like birds. Riley's back remains fixed. He is focused, as he had been told, on a point in the distance. There will be no new memories of Riley, she knows that. One day she will have remembered everything.
