Debut book from Zoe Norton Lodge, Writer and Presenter on ABCs The Checkout, Co-founder of Story Club

'You know the kind of person you wish you could write as well as but realise you never will? Thats Zoe Norton Lodge. If she didnt make me laugh so much I might hate her.'Andrew Denton

'Zoe Norton Lodge is unforgivably funny. I simultaneously adore her writing, and am secretly relieved not to be her direct relative.' Annabel Crabb

'Zoe Norton Lodge is an outstanding talent and the very brightest of rising stars on the Australian creative landscape. She's so excellent that I'm even willing to write wanky things like that for things like this.'Julian Morrow, The Chaser

When Zoe Norton Lodge was growing up in Annandale in the eighties and nineties, the self-proclaimed Heartland of the Inner West was a heady brew of somewhat maladjusted and genuinely unsettling residents. But Annandale was changing. New words like architect and labradoodle drifted out of the overabundance of cafs and eventually entire weeks would go by with no backyard bomb explosions.

These stories of neighbourhood warfare, unsound relations, quashed dreams and facial disfigurement are told with Norton Lodges characteristic comic verve and eye for absurdity: encounter Greek grandparents whose decades-long resentment turns a colander into a weapon; a petrol-sodden Mamma; children sent to school with cat-food sandwiches; distressed furniture; flying babies and other suburban wonders.

Zoe Norton Lodge is also a writer and presenter on The Checkout and The Chasers Media Circus (ABC1), creator of the hit sellout live event-cum-highly obscure TV show Story Club (ABC2) and has had her work published in Best Australian Stories.