Nine Days

It is 1939 and although Australia is about to go to war, it doesn’t quite realise yet that the situation is serious. Deep in the working-class Melbourne suburb of Richmond it is business - your own and everyone else’s - as usual. And young Kip Westaway, failed scholar and stablehand, is living the most important day of his life.

Kip’s momentous day is one of nine that will set the course for each member of the Westaway clan in the years that follow. Kip’s mother, his brother Francis and, eventually, Kip’s wife Annabel and their daughters and grandson: all find their own turning points, their triumphs and catastrophes, in days to come.

But at the heart of all their stories is Kip, and at the centre of Kip’s 15-year-old heart is his adored sister Connie. They hold the threads that will weave a family.

In Nine Days Toni Jordan has harnessed all the spiky wit, compassion and lust for life that drew readers in droves to Addition and Fall Girl. Ambitious in scope and structure, triumphantly realised, this is a novel about one family and every family. It is about dreams and fights and sacrifices. And finally, of course, it is - as it must be - about love.