My Turquoise Years, the eighth book from Victoria writer M.A.C. Farrant, is a memoir of the summer of 1960, when the writer was 14 years old. After her first five years spent repeatedly travelling across the Atlantic with her jet-setting Australian mother, Marion (Farrant as a child) goes to live in Cordova Bay with her aunt and uncle. Every second weekend, her father, Billy, a cargo ship captain, comes to stay, with treats and toys tucked into his sailor’s grip, and time to spend playing with his only child.

Populated with tales of childhood friends, extended family, and small town gossips, Marion’s story is one of youthful exuberance. When Nancy, her long-absent mother, declares she is coming to visit, the entire family is put into a tizzy, and Marion is forced to face her feelings about Nancy’s role in her life.

Farrant paints a vivid picture of 1960 – of the wonders of plastic, Fun-O-Rama on a black-and-white TV, the wonderful optimism of all things turquoise, and of the desire to remain insular, to gloss over world events and focus on day-to-day living. Equally vivid is her self-characterization: Farrant depicts her child self with a wry warmth and charming forthrightness, in keeping with the honest but nostalgia-tinged milieu.

Marion strives to define her place in her world, glamorizing her mother and father, relishing the twists in the family history that her aunt Elsie shares with one and all. Most poignant of all is her determination to remain a child when forces beyond her control – friends, family, and her own body – conspire against her as she blossoms into a young lady.

Farrant tells a compelling postwar coming-of-age story that is crisp and honest. Her detailed descriptions of Victoria in 1960 will delight any reader with knowledge of the city, while her experiences will strike a universal chord. Peppered with grainy black-and-white photos of the people in the memoir, Farrant’s book brings a bygone era to vivid and touching life.