Written in the first person almost as a novel with Agnes as the main subject, King’s memoir reveals how she was able to finally grapple with the events that had blighted her life.

After living and working overseas for 30 years, Agnes returned to Australia, seemingly at the behest of her ageing and definitely narcissistic mother. She’s keen to slay a few dragons from her past and show members of her family just how successful she has become. Fresh from her second divorce and a lifetime of low self-worth, Agnes finally gained some confidence from psychotherapy, after trying all kinds of alternatives from all kinds of practitioners, including some charlatans.

As she visits her mother and surviving family members, Agnes relives her childhood with unloving parents and an all-powerful grandmother who ruled the family company. If the detail of Agnes’s early life seems self-indulgent, then that is to be expected from a woman who had tried to win affection from her parents, always unsuccessfully.

Agnes seems to have lived in a fog during her teenage years, unable to read properly, or concentrate well enough to pass exams, she had learned to melt into the background if something untoward happened.

Just how and why Agnes had started to suppress memories of her childhood, and its traumatic events, is made clear by the book’s end, and she is happy to shake the Australian dust from her shoes to resume her life abroad.

This must be one of the saddest books I have ever read, yet inspiring, as it shows how one woman overcame a horrible childhood to forge her way in the world successfully.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville