"I remember Nana woke me up to announce the news and insisted on cracking a bottle of champagne by my bedside—not in celebration, but as her means of greeting any crisis."
Take a trip back into the cross of the 20s and 30s. Your narrator delightfully regales you with tales of her extended family and their large, eventful house, Maramanah. Her father, her dog Samual Pepys and a large cast of maiden aunts live in a massive terrace at the end of Darlinghurst Road, at the other end lies the "dirty half mile" inhabited by "soiled doves" as her grandmother describes them.
This is really like climbing into a time machine and walking along familiar streets under a very different lens, expressed with a delightfully humorous feel that reminds me of the tales my nana used to tell.
The illustrations in the edition I have adds to the book's charm, as does the forward by Clive James.
4 out of 5, now every time I alight at Kings Cross Station I'll think of it as the former site of Maramanah.
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