Come Back Again

It’s summer and four old friends meet up in their early sixties for a caravanning holiday along Victoria’s rugged surf coast. They were close in their twenties, but the pull of careers and partners took their lives in different directions. Now, disillusioned with life, they’re hoping to rekindle some of their youthful spirit, or at least enjoy a nostalgic holiday.

Nick, divorced and recently made redundant, is struggling with his loss of status. Maggie, marriage celebrant, also divorced, is looking for love on the dating apps, and enjoying a little too much wine in between disappointing dates. Grace is sandwiched between childcare duties for her daughter’s young child and worrying about her elderly parents, while still indulging her live-at-home adult son. And Max, Grace’s husband and once-renowned architect, is being upstaged by his technologically lithe junior.

But as the days heat up, so too does the tension, as old passions and frictions resurface. And a distant bushfire, initially a vague inconvenience, becomes a very real danger that puts them all to the test.

Abigayle Carmody’s debut novel is a warm and engaging celebration of friendship and a poignant, entertaining and humorous look at life at an age when stability and certainty seems to evaporate and new directions open up.