THE GOOD PARENTS

From the author of "Gilgamesh" - long listed for the Orange Prize - comes "The Good Parents", a tale of loss and longing that gets right to the heart of the struggle to do good and be good whilst trying to find a place to belong. Maya de Jong, an eighteen-year-old country girl from the West, comes to live in Melbourne and starts an affair with her boss, the enigmatic Maynard Flynn, whose wife is dying of cancer. When Maya's parents, Toni and Jacob, arrive to stay with her, they are told by her house mate that Maya has gone away and no one knows where she is. As Toni and Jacob wait and search for Maya in Melbourne, everything in their lives is brought into question. They recall the yearning and dreams, the betrayals and choices of their pasts - choices with unexpected and irrevocable consequences. With Maya's disappearance, the lives of all those close to her come into focus, to reveal the complexity of the ties that bind us to one another, to parents, children, siblings, friends and lovers. Pacy and enthralling, "The Good Parents" is at once a vision of contemporary life and a story as old as fairy tales: that of a runaway girl.