Ruth Rothwax is back. The star of Lily Brett’s Too Many Men (2000) is still running a successful letter-writing business in New York City, but she’s branched out into greeting cards. Her father, Edek, with whom she made the trip to Poland in the earlier novel, has moved from Melbourne to New York to be near her. At the heart of the novel is the fraught, yet fond, relationship between them.

Despite many years in therapy and the restorative aspects of the visit to Poland, the Holocaust and its legacy continue to shape Ruth and help explain at least some of her lingering neuroses. When her friend Sonia, whom Ruth thinks must be one of the few women in New York who doesn’t have a food disorder, asks why she doesn’t eat properly, Ruth replies: ‘I can’t eat red meat. I associate it with burning flesh.’