Jane Messer

For a change it's nice to read a book that is set in your own backyard rather than a place half way across the globe. For anyone wanting a nostalgic trip through Sydney this is the book for you. Its set in 2008 around the Lower North Shore, Inner West and Bondi, at the time of the GFC and the back cover intimated it was about the affect fo the GFC on ordinary people's lives. Well, only one character is actually affected by the GFC and little else is said about it. But in a way each of the characters are facing their own personal GFcs and by the end of the book their lives will have changed in ways they would not have imagined. Hopscotch does not seem to have any other central theme and is more a collection of memoirs of the family members and how they deal with issues life has thrown at them.

The parents, Rhonda and Sam Rosen, live in suburban Lane Cove. Sam is 69 years old, in poor health and getting worse and resenting his condition. Rhonda has slowly given up her career to care for him and beginning to resent what she has sacrificed and opportunities let pass. Their youngest daughter Jemma aged 30 and doing well in her legal job, has just left home for her own apartment and independent living. Her feelings of accepting responsibility for herself get challenged when she finds she is attracted to another woman living in her block, raising the questions of self-identity and informing her parents. Disaster strikes her when she is raped by her friend's "acquaintance of an acquaintance".

Liza, the middle child has been somewhat of a non-conformist in her life, travelling around the world and getting involved in NGO activities in various places, the last being with the women of a Papuan New Guinea village and their land management practices. Her biological clock has started ticking so she has returned to Sydney to find a husband. She has found a job running a corporate Daycare Centre and is rather good at it. However, the job is creating a number of moral dilemmas for her. She is living with a man who has achieved a degree of success but is not interested in children or changing his current lifestyle. Her world comes crashing down when she discovers he has been seeing other women and filming their escapades, and her boss at work suggests she look at other centres more in keeping with her moral philosophy - particularly the community child care centre his daughter from his estranged marriage goes to.

The first child Mark is married to Norwegian backpacker Ingrid, and is doing well in his IT salesman job, eyeing the top salesman of the year award, its massive bonus and the all expenses paid trip to Dubai for all the top salesmen of the company worldwide. Ingrid just wants to start a family, a step that does not fit into Mark's over-extended and heavily indebted investments. This is October 2008 and as the markets worldwide tank, so does his job, his investments and the prospects of losing it all and still having a half-a-million dollar debt left behind. Ingrid is furious as her dreams of motherhood, accompanied by a mothercraft nurse, disappear. To survive they will need to return "home" and face up to the wise advice of mother.

The family does pull together and each support the other in ways. Ingrid sums it up as she sees the great value of Mark's family, and rather than abandoning him and his financial failures, accepts the reduced circumstances they face.… (more)