I’m not a big fan of the domestic drama, where there’s a maddie in the family, an absent father, a mother who has dementia, an unfulfilled love affair, and scene setting in Fitzroy, Bondi or St Kilda.

I’m not a against people writing this stuff – and I blame bloody Helen Garner for starting this – it’s just that I don’t read it.

I just finished Georgia Blain’s collection of short stories, “We all live in Bondi then.”

The last four stories, ‘Ship to Shore’, ‘Still breathing’, ‘Sunday’ and ‘We all lived in Bondi then’ are crackers.

Blain, the daughter of Anne Deveson, died in December 2016.

I vaguely knew Blain’s brother in Adelaide, who was as mad as a meat axe but had a unique was of describing reality. Schizophrenia will do that.

This book has a marvellous introduction by Charlotte Wood, which was worth picking up the book alone.

I will be reading more of Blain.