Jennifer Rowe has a talent for creating enjoyably eccentric yet believable characters, and Holly meets plenty of them in Love, Honour and O’Brien – a hearse-driving Elvis impersonator, an elderly phone-sex worker who watches too much late-night television – not to mention a giant python, a possibly possessed cockatoo, and Martin the unflappable blue-eyed landscaper.

Best known for her award-winning children’s books (published under the pseudonym Emily Rodda), this is Rowe’s first adult novel since 1998. It is to be hoped that the ‘untold numbers of nasty little problems ... wriggling under the mountains’ peaceful, nature-loving surface’ will lead to many more adventures for Holly Love and her clairvoyant neighbour, Abigail Honour. Rich in humour, exuberant detail, and vivid descriptions (a queasy criminal’s face is ‘fish-belly pale’, while Una is ‘impeccably groomed and ferociously plain’, and hungover Holly’s mouth is ‘like the bottom of a baby’s pram – all shit and biscuits’); this is playful, escapist fiction to savour.