Little Sister

Dad was just an ordinary bloke who called a bob a bob, and then, through no fault of his own, a bob became ten cents. A quid became two dollars, and Australia became part of the real world. Once television showed us what life could be like it was hard to be satisfied with what you had.'

Moya thinks if her parents had been more like the cool moms and pops' on American TV, life would have been more exciting. But she was stuck in the burbs and how thrilling did that ever get? Exotically named after an Irish tap dancer (after all of the good names had been taken by her two older sisters Sue and Rhonda), Moya tries hard to fit in to her suburban life with very mixed results. Social mobility is now something to aspire to and Moya is bursting to get up and out of that suburban life.

Fast and funny, this is an outstanding memoir of a young life as Moya Sayer-Jones remembers it. Rightly considered as an Australian classic alongside Puberty Blues and Unreliable Memoirs, Little Sister is sharp, warm and wittily nostalgic.

I love to read the stories of young women in our Australian suburbs. What a fertile breeding ground for talent they are, yet so overlooked and even ridiculed. Your book should be an inspiration. If someone in Timbuktu asked me what it was like to live in an Australian suburb I would advise them to peruse your evocative publication.' Dame Edna Everage