Toni Jordan is in fine form with this follow-up to her heart-warming Dinner with the Schnabels.
Taking the spotlight in this outing is eldest daughter, Kylie Schnabel, whose perfectly controlled life unravels spectacularly over the course of a day. Her carefully plotted-out career as a pharmacist is looking shaky as her plans to take over the community chemist where she has worked for 20 years are thwarted by the sale of the business to a discount pharmacy mega chain.
Her relationship with Mr Always-Reliable[1]Colin has some serious questions hanging over after some troubling midnight activity was recorded on his Fitbit while he was away on a conference. Kylie knows it can only mean one thing.
To make matters worse, her headstrong mother, with whom Kylie has a somewhat fraught relationship, has taken a tumble and broken her ankle. Now she needs someone to move in for a while to care for her. The final straw is the unexpected arrival of a spoilt Pomeranian named Caesar.
This is pitch perfect with just the right amount of humour. Toni Jordan brings all her well-honed creative skills to the fore with this delightful tale. Her characters leap off the page with eloquent detail. As Kylie struggles to reframe her world in her mid-40s she is forced to consider that maybe all was not quite as perfect as it seemed. Things that she thought were important might perhaps not be important at all.
I am sure I am not alone in looking forward to getting to know the rest of the Schnabels.
Reviewed by Maryanne Vagg
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Toni Jordan is an award-winning, internationally best-selling novelist.
Her debut novel, Addition, was published in 2008, was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and won best debut fiction in the 2008 Indie awards. In the UK, Addition was a Richard and Judy Summer Read.
Her second novel, Fall Girl, was published in November 2010 in Australia, and also in the UK, Germany, France and Taiwan. Nine Days was published in 2012 to widespread acclaim and is currently a Victorian VCE English text. Our Tiny, Useless Hearts, was published in 2016 and The Fragments was published in 2018. Her most recent novels, Dinner with the Schnabels and Prettier if she Smiled More, tell the ongoing story of the Schnabel family.
Toni has been a columnist for The Age and her short stories and articles have appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Courier Mail, the Herald Sun, The Australian and The Monthly.
Toni taught Fiction Writing at RMIT University from 2007 until 2016 and was RMIT’s Sessional Teacher of the Year in 2014, and for some years also taught novel writing at Faber Academy. She has presented key-note speeches and workshops, appeared on panels at numerous writers festivals and been a writer-in-residence for schools and organisations. Her students and protégées include published novelists and memoirists. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Queensland and a PhD in Creative Arts from Deakin University.
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