A Catalogue of Love

A young woman surfer’s coming of age in Tasmania, where the natural world helps her find herself and navigate grief and trauma. Echoes of Love and Virtue, Breath and H is for Hawk.

‘Did I still love him? No, probably not. Just the memory of him. Except it wasn’t even that. It was probably that I was in love with the memory of the me who’d loved him before.’

Neika learned to surf in the sometimes crystal-clear, sometimes opaque green barrels of Cloudy Bay, under the guidance of her father and stepfather. Bruny Island, surfing and the natural world are as much a part of her as her blood and breath.

In her twenties now, she has made her way in the world without her mother, who died when Neika was only two. Her path to adulthood was shaped by the love of two adoring fathers, but sitting alongside their love was always a mother-shaped hole. How different would she be if she’d had her mother there to guide her? Would she have dodged the mistakes that seem to define her life?

Neika watches the world around her like the scientist she has become, seeking to understand what it means to be a woman in a culture that does not always treat women kindly. In navigating her catalogue of experiences – desire, loss, love and power – she comes to see how each has made her who she is.    

A moving and thrilling novel from the acclaimed author of The Octopus and I.