She and six classmates have announced they’ll be joining the nuns when they leave school at the end of the year. The apparent finality of this collective repudiation of the world, in a weird sort of way, is cool.

First-born, eldest daughter, Little Mother to her siblings, Irish-Australian, brainy schoolgirl at the time the Beaumont children vanish … will the real Carmel please stand up? When it comes time to venture into love and other alternatives, mutinous forces undermine her confidence, and malevolence turns to violence. Now she’s starring in her own horror-home-movie.

Room Temperature, a mosaic of subtle allusion and canny observation, is a novel about memory, time, and the struggle to break away from family pathology.