Journal Entry 1 by catsalive from Rooty Hill, New South Wales Australia on Friday, November 18, 2011

cover:
'The remarkable thing about this morning was not that it was Grace's birthday; after all, that occurred once a year and by the time you got to forty you should have ceased to be surprised. No, what gave the day its unusual quality was that the postman, when he arrived, handed her a present from her dead lover.'

By the time Grace is eighteen, she has been orphaned, moved countries and lost touch with her only brother. Talented, awkward and a little fierce, she can't help thinking that she's managed to lose, rather carelessly she feels, anything she's ever loved. So when she decides to revisit her past in America, she wants to know everything from what shade her mother's lipstick to who, exactly, she should be rebelling against. And she's brought her camera - she's going to catch these memories and pin them down to keep. What she isn't expecting that long, hot summer in New Hampshire is to meet the love of her life.

Some years later, now divorced and flourishing as a controversial photographer, Grace lives alone - she likes the fact that everything will be exactly where she left it. Until Grace finds that she is, quite literally, being haunted by the past. She keeps seeing things, hints at the edge of a developing picture, out of the window of her flat, just at the corner of her vision. And when she slips on a leaf, as can happen in autumn if the leaves fall suddenly, her past crashes into her present and everything changes...

In this, her fifth novel, bestselling writer Marika Cobbold brings her trademark wit and observation to a finely wrought and moving tale about someone who has to confront the choices of her life, both as an artist and a woman.