This thoughtful, disturbing, and darkly funny new collection explores the theme of uneasy domestic life in poems arranged in three sequences and narrated by a gas fitter, his wife, and their teenage daughter. Without explicit storytelling, the secrets and peculiarities of each character are revealed in technically superb poetry that is deceptively easy to navigate.

Anna Jackson is a professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington and the author of Catullus for Children, The Long Road to Teatime, and The Pastoral Kitchen.