نان کامیل

...In the kitchen of a small house in Leichhardt, a young woman is dancing with her eight-year-old daughter. It’s winter, and dark outside. A dish of lentil burgers sits warming on the hotplate and the strains of some exotic Latin tango strum insistently from a large black tape deck that stands on top of the fridge. Mother is clasping daughter in a parody of adult coupledom, each awkward and jolting with laughter as they stride, with exaggerated poise, up and down the skillion kitchen, sweeping across the black and white chequerboard tiles, heads tilted back, arms outstretched stiffly in the arch and demonic thrust of the tango. Dum dum, da da! da-da-da-da dah, dum dum da da! The mother is chanting time, pouting with mock seriousness, her cropped black hair standing upright in silky spikes of dishevelment and impatience. In her arms, her slight, fey, fair-haired daughter, hair drawn back in a French plait, her thin legs in dark green stockings and black lace-up school shoes, alternately mimicking the fierce concentration of her mother and erupting into loud, raucous schoolgirl laughter. For a moment, she breaks away to perform a dizzy pirouette on her own. ‘See this step,’ she says. ‘You go, one two three four . . . and then you go . . .’ After too many nights of takeaway pizzas, Marita wants just one year off to look after her daughter, Camille. then she meets Stephen, a public servant in the complex process of reinventing himself, training as a shiatsu masseur. As their relationship grows, so does the drama of parenting Camille, in this elegantly crafted, warmly appealing novel of contemporary Australian life. Set in contemporary Autralia, the novel tells of the development of a relationship between Marita and Stephen, both in the process of changing their lives___