Author(s): Moira Burke

Fiction

In the 1980s in the Melbourne suburb of Fawkner, Josie's father is drinking himself to an ugly and appalling death. Josie's mother is a factory machinist, bringing home piecework to keep the family afloat.

And Josie is surviving, or not-self-destructive sex, excessive alcohol, drugs, brutalised friendships.
But her internal monologue-intense, immediate and raw-reveals a heartbreaking portrait of an intelligent young woman desperately looking for a way to make sense of her life, grappling with her feelings of repulsion and love for her father and her longing to be loved.

First published in 1998,Losing Itis a vivid and visceral account of 1980s working-class Melbourne and a coming-of-age story that is both familiar and unique, shocking and intimate.