The Real Story, set in contemporary Auckland, is told from three third-person perspectives, framing the lives of three generations of women. The central catalysing event is the death of the son-in-law, husband, father (respectively) of these three female protagonists, and leads to an irrevocable unraveling of life’s certainties.
At just under 50,000 words in length, the novel explores themes of loss, grief, acceptance and the nature of memory itself and explores generational differences as it follows the lives of three women struggling to come to terms with reality in the wake of their loss.
