{"product_id":"9781925410648","title":"Losing It","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘\u003ci\u003eI read it in a gulp. I seem to know this girl.\u003c\/i\u003e’ Helen Garner\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn 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. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAnd Josie is surviving, or not—self-destructive sex, excessive alcohol, drugs, brutalised friendships.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBut 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.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFirst published in 1998, \u003ci\u003eLosing It\u003c\/i\u003e is 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. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe first time you slept with him properly his dad was in Turkey his  mum gave you the double bed chocolate-brown velvet bedhead with  night-lights in it and a radio, a big furry bedspread and a fake  tapestry of lions and tigers on the wall, she even laid out a nightie  for you, you didn’t wear it but you crumpled it up to make it look like  you did and you woke to a soft touch on your forehead in the morning her  gold tooth glinting smiling at you with a boiled egg and a cup of  bitter coffee.   \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMoira Burke is a Melbourne writer. \u003ci\u003eLosing It\u003c\/i\u003e is her first novel.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘\u003ci\u003eLosing It\u003c\/i\u003e was never a classic but probably deserves to be…Moira Burke creates an arresting sense of place, startling in its familiarity and strangeness, and is a master of cadence. Her prose has a raw poetic rhythm, the power to constantly surprise and drag you into its flow. To lose \u003ci\u003eLosing It\u003c\/i\u003e would have been a cultural crime.’ \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSydney Morning Herald\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘Stark, poetic, truthful, compassionate; self-knowledge comes at a breathtaking pace.’ \u003cb\u003eCarmel Bird\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘Addictive, powerful and raw, \u003ci\u003eLosing It\u003c\/i\u003e lays bare the unflinching realities for a teenager trapped in a spiral of self-destruction. Who does not see some of herself in Josie, a heroine for our uncertain times?’ \u003cb\u003eRebecca Starford\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘We should be glad that Moira Burke’s \u003ci\u003eLosing It\u003c\/i\u003e has received a new lease on life…Long before Eimear McBride had the creative spark to appropriate James Joyce and produce her interior monologue masterpiece \u003ci\u003eThe Lesser Bohemians\u003c\/i\u003e, set in London’s dank bedsits and late night bars, it turns out Burke was doing something remarkably similar with Melbourne’s sleazy St Kilda clubs and rowdy Coburg Italian family homes. How could we have missed her?’ \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eAustralian\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Text Publishing Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47141252595952,"sku":"9781925410648","price":9.49,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781925410648_p0.jpg?v=1763634843","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781925410648","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}