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About
This daring and dazzling debut shines a light on the unsung heroes of our communities: the carers. Jay is devoted to the care of her teenage twins who view the world as differently as it views them. Frank is sweet, sensitive and bullied, while whip-smart Teddy needs an iPad to speak. With an absent husband and battling a nightmare bureaucracy, Jay leans heavily on Keep, her lifelong half-real friend. But in the corner of her eye lurks her mother, and a childhood Jay knows she can't ever outrun. Jay believes she is managing quite well, with a half-grip on this half-life of hers. That is, until Teddy starts to get sick, refusing to eat, while doctors refuse to listen, confounding everything Jay thought she knew about what lies ahead. The Keepers is an incredible and fiercely honest novel about the damage done by parents who can't love, the failures of a community that only claims to care, and the resilience of those whose stories mostly go untold.
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Reviews
"'The Keepers is an extraordinary piece of writing. A constellation of love and pain opening up to the reader in a magical and terrifying way. It's utterly remarkable.'"
Annabel Crabb
"'Wildly beautiful, bravely honest, devastating and hopeful but most of all, brimming with love. The Keepers will break your heart. Al Campbell is a major new voice in Australia's literary landscape. Bravo to an extraordinary book - it's like nothing else I've ever read.'"
Nikki Gemmell
"'Al Campbell is a hell of a writer, able to move seamlessly from blunt realism to vivid fantasy, from intimate whisper to full-throated howl. The Keepers goes to some very dark places and is unflinching in its depiction of society's abandonment of its most vulnerable, but it's also infused with a love so deep, ferocious and clear-eyed that my heart was fortified just by witnessing it.'"
Emily Maguire