“Songful time travelling” awaits in this memoir, a lyrical time warp from last century, floating across then and there to here and now. This collection of moments sifted from a mother’s life is like an old movie, as seen through the child’s eyes, with timeless messages. The author holds up her mother’s mirror on her life, revealing fragments that shine under the spotlight of reminiscence. It’s a snapshot of painted impressions that take us away and make us connect with things that ring true. “To hear the lyricism in life we might listen out for faraway cadences while we hear the realities of a life as lived,” says Jill Forster. “There were plenty of cockatoos screeching in my mother’s life. What she needed was to hear the doves coo. What she did hear every day was a caged canary call.” We hear the poetry in the faint whir of a ceiling fan that oscillates with the sounds of family life and we wait for time to reveal another message, as we stop to listen and get the drift of days now gone.
