The Listmaker

When Sarah (I2) is not at boarding school she lives with her two happy go-lucky aunts. For her this is, however, an inadequate prelude to the wonderful times that are sure to come when her glamorous, globe-trotting father and his beautiful girlfriend Piriel marry and she moves in with them. The narrative is constructed around Sarah's compulsive list making through which she attempts, by controlling circumstances, to avoid the uncertainty and disappointment created by her father who regularly fails to honour his commitments to her. However, she also wants to impose her idea of order on others. The aunts are wise enough and sufficiently loving to understand, but not so her school mates whose responses are seen, revealingly, through Sarah's eyes. Set against the background of her father's impending wedding and the aunts' move to a cottage in the country, Sarah struggles to maintain her preconceptions and prejudices. As the Australian summer unfolds we see how Sarah's viewpoint gradually shifts to one of realisation that the gifts of love and friendship offered by her aunts and by Corrie, the girl next door, are worth more than the hope of approval from people as self-centred as her father and Piriel.