Losing It

‘I read it in a gulp. I seem to know this girl.’ Helen Garner

In the 1980s in the Melbourne suburb of Fawkner, Josie’s father is drinking himself to an ugly and appalling death. Josie’s mother is a factory machinist, bringing home piecework to keep the family afloat.

And Josie is surviving, or not—self-destructive sex, excessive alcohol, drugs, brutalised friendships.

But her internal monologue—intense, immediate and raw—reveals a heartbreaking portrait of an intelligent young woman desp...