Jay Verney’s voice is not unlike Gillian Mears’s – rich, confident and brimming with adroit asides. Verney frequently stops to smell the roses, and dig around the compost. She observes the variations of a landscape, the behaviour of her characters, the nature of an institution. Here she is on a McDonald’s restaurant in Palm Springs: ‘It was America in metaphor, though without the crazed gunman to add that final touch of piquant authenticity.’

While the family in Mears’s The Mint Lawn owes much of its identity to the New South Wales river town that is home, the family in Percussion is very much a creature of Pinier Bay, commonly known as Pineapple Bay, a small coastal town in Queensland. Brian Maher, the patriarch, is in the deliriously happy position of being an alcoholic in charge of a pub. The evidence of Brian’s alcoholism is mesmerising. The port and brandy starter for breakfast, the beer with his toast and eggs, the constant top-ups that only occasionally spill over into rage and misery. Although the portrait of Brian is a genial one – the family is clearly impressed by his ability to put it away – we are allowed no illusions about drunks, particularly when Brian turns nasty and verbally attacks his grandson.