CHAPPY

by Patricia Grace, Penguin/Random House.

My favourite work by Patricia Grace is actually the picturebook The Kuia & The Spider, published in 1981. I can still hear the words reverberating through my father’s chest, as I sat on his knee waiting to turn each page. My dad read it to me and I read it to my little brother and sisters. It was interwoven into our upbringing. But Grace’s novel Chappy will make for better beach reading. It is a story about family, race and figuring out a sense of place in the world. Grace took a 10-year hiatus, then published this in 2015. It’s nice to have a work by her that still has that lovely new-book smell.