TEN THOUSAND AFTERSHOCKS

Michelle Tom

RRP $34.99

After Michelle Tom’s house was damaged by a deadly magnitude 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch in 2011, she and her young family suffered through another 10,000 aftershocks before finally relocating to the stability of Melbourne. But soon after arriving, Michelle received the news that her estranged sister was dying. Determined to reconnect before her sister died, Michelle flew home to visit, and memories of childhood flooded back. Told through the five stages of an earthquake via remembered fragments, Michelle explores the similarities between seismic upheaval and her own family’s tragedies.

A powerful, poetic and moving memoir of family, violence and estrangement, Ten Thousand Aftershocks weaves together a series of ever-widening and far-reaching emotional and seismic aftershocks in a beautifully written and compelling account of a dark family drama.