Following the nightmarish caesarean birth of her son, Veronica retreats into a private world of self-imposed silence. Unable to walk and confined to her hospital bed, she types confessions about her early, troubled friendship with a family whose struggles came to shape and inhabit her life. While Veronica attempts to disentangle the threads of her past, her psychiatrist, feverish with hubris and convinced of the unambiguous revelations of writing therapy, secretly reads her compositions as they travel covertly from her laptop to his files. The story unravels through evocative, multi-layered prose. Murphy’s skilful use of the figurative suggests both metamorphosis and psychosis, as the boundaries between people, bodies and things coalesce. Characters mirror each other and reflect myths of return and sacrifice: monstrous sons, devoted wives, abandoned lovers. The reader is allowed to be arbiter, deciding on the truth of Veronica’s visions and words – what is veiled, what is revealed? It is a questioning that increases in urgency as the novel progresses to its engrossing conclusion.

Any tightness lacking in Murphy’s narrative is counterbalanced by the elegant compression of her striking metaphors. Repetition occurs but makes sense in the context of the haunting return of memories that demand explanation. An elevated mysticism pervades the most clinical of conversations, yet this is fitting as visceral passion undermines the detachment of medical proficiency. Behind it all, Perth and its watery boundary form an epic backdrop for the merging of quotidian concerns with subconscious, underworld currents. The result is a stunning début from a writer possessed of great talent and promise.