It is 1979 and a teenage girl is charmed by a man she meets in a disco. Before long, like Alice through the looking glass, she tumbles into a world of strange and frightening characters. Desperate to escape, she takes us into the darkness and out again, delivering her tale with wit, warmth and furious zest.
Memoirs of a Suburban Girl is the cautionary tale of an everyday girl who makes a wrong turn.
'Deb Kandelaars takes the reader safely into a place where she herself was never safe. Ever since I first saw material from this book I knew it was something astonishing. Its wholehearted, witty and vividly accomplished account of the fascinating and terrible reality of a violent relationship offers us an understanding that we'll all wonder how we've lived without - this is a very big achievement.' - Peter Bishop, Varuna, The Writers' House
Deb Kandelaars was born in the Riverland, South Australia, and grew up in Adelaide’s north-eastern suburbs. She graduated from the University of Adelaide with a Masters in Creative Writing. Memoirs of a Suburban Girl is her first novel winning her a Longlines residential fellowship at Varuna, The Writers’ House in 2009, and was shortlisted for the Adelaide Festival Awards for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2010.