A Bough in Hell — Dymphna Cusack

Vulnerable and uncertain of herself, Roslyn is a woman who needs people needs to feel that people need her. But her husband Rod, an officer in the Australian Navy, is often away at sea, and her daughter -- grown up and preoccupied with her studies and her boyfriend -- comes only rarely to see her. Imagining slights where perhaps none exist, and feeling herself shunned by the tenants in her Sydney block of flats, Roslyn starts drinking to console herself on her lonely evenings at home, unaware that what is at first only a harmless temporary escape from barren reality will grow into a need, and then into an overpowering obsession.