Reading Australian novels is often like gazing through an album of snapshots taken by various photographers attending the same party. The subject matter will depend on what stage of the evening the photos were taken – all the way from pre-dinner drinks to the finale of a Bacchanalian brawl – and it will depend, of course, on who is taking the photos. What is the photographer looking for? Who are the subjects that captivate?

Catherine Jinks and Georgia Blain live in the Blue Mountains and Sydney, respectively, and it is fascinating to observe their different attitudes to partygoing. Jinks is a versatile and robust writer who has written for children and the medieval murder mystery market, but her forte is the satiric novel. Her antecedents lie in Jane Austen and the Amises. Jinks’s previous excursions into this genre include An Evening with the Messiah (1996) and Little White Secrets (1997). With Bella Vista, I think she has reached her peak.