Rosemarie leaned her weight on the big kitchen knife w ith blind efficiency. No one wanted to know the real secrets , not the really big ones. And, she thought emphatically, I don't want anyone to know mine!On Christmas Eve in 1967, a London woman unhappily transplanted to the Austral ian suburbs makes a decision that will change forever the lives of her four young children. Forty years on, those children are adept at concealing their shared pain. Deborah has a demanding political career, James is a successful artist, Robert a respected school principal. Only Meredith, the baby of the family seems struck. But as their father begins to lose his grip on reality, they find themselves floundering i n an unfamiliar sea. And their past is about to reach into t he present in ways that will shock and challenge them all . . . A spellbinding contemporary novel, Listen draws us deep into the intensely private world of family life and brilliantly illuminates the joys, sorrows and sustaining comfort that we find there.

Rosemarie leaned her weight on the big kitchen knife w ith blind efficiency. No one wanted to know the real secrets , not the really big ones. And, she thought emphatically, I don't want anyone to know mine!On Christmas Eve in 1967, a London woman unhappily transplanted to the Austral ian suburbs makes a decision that will change forever the lives of her four young children. Forty years on, those children are adept at concealing their shared pain. Deborah has a demanding political career, James is a successful artist, Robert a respected school principal. Only Meredith, the baby of the family seems struck. But as their father begins to lose his grip on reality, they find themselves floundering i n an unfamiliar sea. And their past is about to reach into t he present in ways that will shock and challenge them all . . . A spellbinding contemporary novel, Listen draws us deep into the intensely private world of family life and brilliantly illuminates the joys, sorrows and sustaining comfort that we find there.