Book description
Growing up during the 1980s in the safe complacency of the Australian
suburbs, Plum Coyle should be happy. But on the cusp of her fourteenth
birthday - and on the fringe of her peer group - she lives in terror of
the disapproval of her cruel and fickle girlfriends, and most of all,
she hates her awkward, changing body with a passion. So when Plum's
glamorous next-door neighbour Maureen, a young wife and mother,
befriends Plum, Plum responds with worshipful fervour. Plum feels
herself reinvented. With Maureen, she becomes the girl she's always
wanted to be. But Maureen has an ulterior motive for taking Plum under
her wing . . . Sonya Hartnett's previous novels have won the
Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and
The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. She lives in Melbourne.
