This week I had my novel published. It is a work of autofiction that grew from a project I began over 35 years ago. As a time-poor single parent, I recorded my children’s words and moments on scraps of paper, which I kept in shoeboxes.
During a move from Tasmania to Melbourne in 2018, I rescued these notes from being discarded. They now form a rich foundation for this story.
With an ageing population and rising rates of vision impairment, there is a growing need for authentic narratives that reflect lived experience and explore the realities of vision loss.
The novel follows the story about Faye, a vulnerable single mother who is pushed to the brink by anonymous accusations —until a hidden diagnosis reveals the truth and forces her to fight for her children and her sanity.
Synopsis
Title of Work: Look. There’s Nothing Wrong with the Girl.
Genre: Autofiction
Look. There’s Nothing Wrong with the Girl is a 82,500-word emotionally charged work of autofiction about Faye, a young single mother whose life begins to unravel after neighbours report her to authorities. As scrutiny intensifies and her independence is stripped away, she is pushed towards a future that threatens not only her freedom, but her family and future.
Growing up on an isolated pig farm in south-eastern Tasmania in the 1960s, Faye always felt different—awkward, accident-prone, and never quite belonging. A scholarship to a prestigious Catholic girls’ school in Hobart only deepens her sense of difference and exclusion.
As an adult, she drifts through unsafe relationships in search of stability, until she meets Shane whose career steadily distances him from family life until he leaves her to raise their three children alone. When new neighbours move in across the road, their kindness feels like a lifeline but it soon becomes unsettling. Anonymous letters begin appearing in Faye’s mailbox—threatening, intimate, impossible to ignore. She realises she is being watched, judged and quietly undermined.
Eventually, Faye uncovers a shattering truth about herself that explains her lifelong struggles and places her children at risk of being taken from her. To protect them and reclaim her future, she must confront the forces closing in around her and reclaim her life before it is too late.
Blurb
Look. There’s Nothing Wrong with the Girl blends true events with fictional story telling in which a vulnerable single mother is targeted by anonymous accusations and an increasingly invasive system, only to learn that the secret behind her lifelong ‘difference’ could cost her custody of her children — unless she fights back before everything she loves is taken from her.
Buy my Book
If you’re interested in buying my book, it is available at the Lulu online bookstore –
For more information on Google Books –
