Framed by an older Lily looking back on her childhood and adolescence from the perspective of 1980s cultural nationalism, there is an even-tempered sureness to this novel, which never becomes nostalgic. Even if the often graceful prose occasionally risks overstatement, Bitto’s way with her characters is confident and persuasive.

The Strays is not in any sense a simple re-enactment of its inspiration – the Heide of Sunday and John Reed. The novel’s events are moved back to an earlier time, and there are no direct parallels to Sidney Nolan, Joy Hester, or Albert Tucker. What Bitto does offer are secret re-imaginings for historical grist. The suggestion that Sunday Reed may have painted small sections of Nolan’s Ned Kelly series, and allowing Helena’s miniatures, which contain ‘the strength of weather’, to echo the recovered en plein air of Clarice Beckett, are both effective. They also point to one of the novel’s most poignant themes – recovery.

Bitto has a deep interest in the transformative power of memory, in how life’s chaos is shaped into story, its each retelling laying down a fresh stratum of personal and cultural meaning. The Strays has the earthy feel of what David Malouf calls the most exotic place – the one we grew up in.