I was a touch apprehensive coming back to this book, given the rapture with which I remembered it being received by my 13-year-old self. What if I had overestimated it in my memory? What if it wasn’t much chop after all? Well, I needn’t have worried, Playing Beatie Bow delighted me all over again, at every turn.

Essentially a time-travel saga, the narrative is also wonderfully satisfying in its exploration of family relationships and the evolution of its introspective protagonist, 14-year-old Abigail, who has been involuntarily transported 100 years back in time to 1870s The Rocks.As a lifelong sucker for history, the vivid descriptions of 19th-century inner Sydney – in all its stinking, toothless, rat-ridden glory – were a total pleasure to read now, as they were then. The characters and places are so evocatively rendered that this past world seems immediate and relatable, even as its strangeness is emphasised. It’s a sophisticated and engrossing yarn. Highly recommended.

Sarah Fitzpatrick is from Readings Hawthorn