Michau-Crawford's writerly ear is well attuned to the nuances of the Australian vernacular; as the focus of the stories alternates between Len, his embattled wife Evie, their daughter Olive, and her daughter Louise, she makes subtle shifts in language, which reflect the attitudes of each character and period, from the 1940s through the conservative 1950s, the radical 1970s, to the present.

The eponymous penultimate story won the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize in 2013, and would have made an admirable finale. As it is, it makes the coda of 'Can of worms 2016' seem extraneous – that is until the wallop of the last sentence.