12 Edmondstone Street by David Malouf is a memoir/essay which uses his childhood home in Brisbane in the 1930s and 1940s to gently observe the way the beliefs and experiences of a family’s past shape a child’s view of and relationship with the world as an adult.  Room by room, down to the space beneath the Queenslander (a raised timber house with verandahs on all sides), he gives a child’s view of his family, their lives and interactions, and the objects within the house that have meaning for him. Malouf writes beautiful and poetic prose which evokes Brisbane as it was then. He is a revered Australian author who was known as a poet before his first novel was published 1975 and has also published short stories, plays and opera libretti.

A more detailed review can be found here.