[1] Returning home one day elderly Matilda finds a young boy sitting in her lounge room.
At first a little wary of him, after he declares "I have bad news for her" she engages him in conversation and slowly begins to tell him the story of her life.
[4] Writing in Australian Book Review Rebecca Starford called the book "part fable, part love story" and noted that Hartnett's "tales brim with nuance and, though straightforward, are disarmingly sophisticated; her weighty symbolism, saturating the most desiccated of landscapes, is one of the finest in our national literature.
In an attempt to catalogue her original voice, Hartnett has often been classified as a children’s or young adult fiction writer, categories that she has resisted, often vehemently, for many years.
Although her novels continue to adopt child and teenage perspectives, her literary preoccupations span all ages.