Shirley

It's been twenty years since her mother was photographed, blood-soaked, outside the family home. A famous TV food personality, she fled the country. Since that time, the girl has grown up. She's bought an apartment, learned her own cooking style, fallen in love. She lives a quiet life, working as a copywriter for a health insurance company. She's found happiness, finally. But strange things are in the air. Her easygoing boyfriend has started sleeping with men. Her mother is selling the infamous family home. And a glamorous, pregnant neighbour has moved into the apartment downstairs, calling into question everything the girl believes about her own desires. Among conspiracies, dubious loyalties, and mercenary impulses, how do we work out who is worthy of our devotion and who is just a fan? Shirley charts a search for meaning in a world where the fracturing of ambitions - work and purpose, real estate and home, family and love - has left us uncertain how to recognise ourselves.

Emily Westmoreland: Ronnie Scotts second novel marks the beginning of a great rememberingin which artists reflect on the summer of 2019-20, a summer that we previously thought was going to be marked solely by bushfires. Shirley begins on new years eve. Our narrator has broken up with her sweet but hapless boyfriend, who wants to start experimenting with men. Her new downstairs neighbours know something of her celebrity mothers scandalous past. Her family home is being sold. But in the way of real life, Scott so deftly focuses on the minutiaemaking meals and replying to emailsthat Shirleys overarching questions seem almost peripheral to the protagonist's compelling daily existence. In contrast to Scotts debut, The Adversary, in which the characters are still trying to work out who they are, Shirley, in many ways, is a more mature work: its about learning to love people but rely on yourself. One of the welcome similarities between the two novels is the perceptive way Scott writes about the transformative nature of parties, when the tiniest spark with a new person can represent an entire expansive futureShirley is bookended by twin festivals that will be familiar to many Victorians, the first at the beginning of summer and the last festival of 2020, before our worlds shrunk to four walls. For readers who enjoyed Jessica Au's Cold Enough for Snow, Shirley is an accomplished exploration of the claustrophobic relationship between mother and daughter. Emily Westmoreland is a bookseller and the program director of Willy Lit Fest. Books+Publishing is Australias number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Ronnie Scott writes essays and criticism for newspapers, websites and magazines. He's a Lecturer in the Writing and Publishing discipline at RMIT University. The Adversary is his first novel.

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