Nearly all of the stories feature a young woman as protagonist. Many are located in suburban Australia, or more precisely, in the mind of a person in suburbia; several are simply inner monologues. In a number of stories, the protagonist is displaced in a foreign country: these read like a travel diary of sorts, with tales set in Italy, Greece, France and the Czech Republic. ‘Sojourn’, about a road-trip through the French countryside in a Land Rover that breaks down, is a vivid depiction of the frustrations, as well as the rewards, of travel. A story set in Japan features Japanese protagonists rather than the familiar Western woman, but it feels less authentic, more romanticised. ‘Emerald Princess’, about a Japanese soldier returning to Tasmania in his eighties, is more successful.

In both the penultimate and final stories, the protagonist is physically isolated. In ‘Poem of the Sea’, a bereaved woman removes herself to a shack on a remote coastline. In ‘Here Be Dragons’, the protagonist takes her husband and young son back to the family farm. Both stories involve a tentative connection with the land and others in the area. In this way, these stories are representative of the collection as a whole: the lone self seeking tiny but meaningful connections with those around her.