One of her most recent works Births, Deaths and Marriages, a memoir of her childhood, was short-listed for the 2009 Nita Kibble Literary Award.
Novelist Charlotte Wood called Between a Wolf and a Doga novel of devastating clarity that traverses Blain's familiar terrain: the ordinary sadnesses in families, betrayal and forgiveness, the small, potent beauties of daily life that we allow to slip unnoticed through our fingers".
In all her books Blain ruminates on families, siblings, loss, death, marriages and partnerships, in prose of stunning clarity and penetrating insight.
Her writing is superbly paced and structured, and she has a gift for conjuring beaches, bush, and the suburbs of Sydney and Adelaide.
[4]She was, "... Acclaimed as a novelist, short story writer and essayist who transformed the everyday into works of extraordinary beauty and clarity.