Bookrate

'Completely original and bursting with love in all its messy, complicated forms. I loved this book.' FAVEL PARRETT'Never have ordinary suburban lives felt so rambunctious, exhilarating or hilarious.' CATE KENNEDYFor those who loved Olive Kitteridge and Boy Swallows Universe comes a darkly funny, deeply moving novel told with breathtaking originality and dazzling talent.Leslie Bird loves being a wife and mother but loathes her husband and children. The only person she ever loved was born dead.Meet Leslie Bird, the irascible matriarch of a big bonkers family, coming of age and to the boil, as the secrets and slights that have shaped her and her hapless husband's lives impact their children in the most profound and complex ways. In other words, everyone's story. Sort of. Because this is a story, and family, like none you've ever read before.Things She Would Have Said Herself is a darkly funny, deeply moving novel about the lengths and breadths one woman will go to ignore her own and others' pain and what happens when she's confronted by it one sweltering Christmas day.A story of motherhood, marriage, madness, unspeakable loss and the heartbreaking messy love that holds a family together. Honest, revealing, resonant and startlingly original, if you loved Olive Kitteridge and Boy Swallows Universe, you will love this book!'Into the labyrinth of the tumultuous, teeming inner lives of the "big bonkers family" of Leslie Bird and her kin we go, and never have ordinary suburban lives felt so rambunctious, exhilarating or hilarious. Pitch-perfect on life, mortality and the detritus at the bottom of the wardrobe, Therese serves up a delicious tale, told with a joyous, mordantly witty bravura.' CATE KENNEDY'Raw, evocative storytelling . . . Things She Would Have Said Herself will appeal to fans of Olive Kitteridge, as it unpacks the trauma that shapes difficult people and shows an unshrinking commitment towards exploring discomfort, grief and loss.' BOOKS+PUBLISHING'This is a book like no other - utterly brilliant, both acerbic and kind, astute and compassionate . . . A lustrously clever work, relentlessly uncovering layer upon layer of human experience, the minutiae of family life, the power of the word and the centrality of childhood (and other) losses in determining the choices we make' LIVING ARTS CANBERRA'Darkly funny.' SUNDAY AGE'A terrific tale.' THE SENIOR