Jack and Jill — Helen Hodgman

Until Jack arrives at their door one evening, and steps inside to find the skinny, wild-looking child sitting with her grim-faced father. It's the start of all Jill's problems.

'Absence makes the heart grow fonder,' threatens Jack, as he marches off to war. And he's right, in a way - but this is no ordinary romance.

Spanning the period from the Depression to the freewheeling '60s, Helen Hodgman's second novel, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, is a masterpiece, a twisted fairytale told with her characteristic dark wit.

'What a boon to Australian writing Helen Hodgman is - the playful, brooding ice sculptor of human weirdness.' Craig Sherborne