The Sirens Sing

From award-winning writer Kristel Thornell, The Sirens Sing is a portrait of Australian longing. It explores desire, how it haunts and shapes us, and how, from generation to generation, there are echoes, overlaps and intersections in how we love, who we love, and why we love, as we are compelled to repeat the same patterns over and over again, like moths to a flame.

The Blue Mountains, mid-1990s. Heather and David are two young people on the brink of adulthood, drawn together by their study of Italian. David is smitten with Heather, but has no idea how she feels about him. Besides Italian in common, they are both children of struggling single mothers, who raised them in the grungy Inner West of Sydney—share houses, a squat, a Housing Commission flat—before moving to Blackheath. At a festive evening to celebrate Heather’s final high-school exam, events take a course that will profoundly change the lives of everyone present.

Sydney, mid-1970s. Jan, the unconfident daughter of working-class parents and the first in her family to go to university, strikes up a friendship with bohemian, assured Alicia. They quickly become close. But one night down by Blackwattle Bay—the night of Gough Whitlam’s dismissal—things go awry.

The Sirens Sing by Kristel Thornell

Out 7 September from HarperCollins

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