Indelible Ink, BY FIONA MCGREGOR, SCRIBE, $32.95
A late-life divorce leaves Marie King with a large house on Sydney’s North Shore, a horribly judgmental brood of adult children and a growing dependence on white goods and alcohol.
So far, so predictable – until the day, on impulse, she gets her first tattoo. Then another. She becomes the painted lady, comfortable in her own skin for the first time, and with her new friends from the tattoo parlour, pursues a darker and more dangerous life, which challenges all her comfortable middle-class assumptions.
The dismay of her family and rich friends provides plenty of laughs, while giving McGregor the chance to probe for something deeper. Readers searching for that rare thing, a contemporary Australian satire, will find it here.
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