Parrett’s second novel, When the Night Comes (2014), opens in familiar territory: a mother fleeing a tumultuous marriage on a ferry in the night, two children in tow. Set in a small fishing town on Bruny Island off the coast of Tasmania, Parrett’s debut novel Past the Shallows (2011) is narrated from the perspective of two brothers subject to the whims of a violent, alcoholic father their mother died in a car accident in an attempt to escape with them to a better life. Across three novels, the Australian author’s concern has been the vulnerability of children, dependent upon the mercy of adults as they navigate an inscrutable, forbidding world. It’s a grim assessment, one that I returned to as I immersed myself in the world of Favel Parrett’s fiction. I think drafting does give you that – the invisible work is there underneath.‘Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can’t get out of it on your own,’ Tove Ditlevsen wrote in Childhood (1967), the first volume in her autobiographical trilogy, an account of a lonely, impoverished Copenhagen upbringing. “It’s like an iceberg underneath, what’s on the page is a lot of work and feeling. “This the most: every scene had to be the essence of true emotion and rhythm, which is why it’s so short.” Parrett edits heavily each chapter was drafted 15 to 20 times. There was still love is her third novel and, she believes, her best. Records were kept in the little churches in every little village.” Lots of records were lost during the war. Tracing her family tree through genealogy revealed little. To this day, Parrett doesn’t know why her grandmother left Czechoslovakia, how she met her grandfather, what she was like as a child, what her parents were like.

I would give anything to just have a few hours with them, to ask questions and listen.”

“Dates and facts are just that: they’re not stories.

And that’s what makes up a life really – what did you want to be when you were young, when did your heart first break, who was your first love.” “Because when they’re gone, those stories are just dust. Parrett encourages anyone with grandparents or older relatives to talk to them.

There was still love by favel parrett