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    Breathe
    Breathe
    Breathe
    Ebook200 pages2 hours

    Breathe

    By Jackie Davis

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    About this ebook

    'Breathe' is the story of the youngest girl in a quirky, out of the ordinary family in a small New Zealand town in the 1960s. They are a family driven by the mother's flamboyant style and apparent lack of and disinterest for parenting. The children spend much of their time alone, making up games and adventures in their neighbourhood while the mother pursues her own interests - parties and dinners with extravagant, glamorous friends, and following her love for music. She dreams of being a famous pianist.
    The protagonist, unnamed throughout the novel, is a dreamer, fantasising about a 'normal' family. Her greatest desire is that her absent father will come home and live with them again.
    The story follows the life of the mother and her children through a period of several weeks from late spring through to summer. The family spend Christmas at home then holiday at a beach house where the promise of an idyllic week turns into a tragedy from which the family will never recover.
    A parallel story is told, of the protagonist as an adult, when she comes home for a family funeral. As she tries to make sense of the overwhelming loss she is experiencing, she realises that nothing has changed since she was a little girl.

    Breathe was first published by Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd in 2002.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJackie Davis
    Release dateFeb 15, 2014
    ISBN9781310963803
    Breathe
    Author

    Jackie Davis

    Jackie Davis holds an MA in Creative Writing from the prestigious International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University, Wellington and she has won and been placed in numerous writing competitions, both in New Zealand and internationally. Her work has been published in New Zealand, Australia and Japan. Her two novels, 'Breathe' (2002) and 'Swim' (2003) were both published by Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, but are no longer available in print. She lives in Gisborne, New Zealand.

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    • 4/5
      Set mainly in the 50's New Plymouth, this first novel from Jackie Davis is narrated by an unnamed nine-year-old girl, third daughter in a family of four (the youngest, Bertie, is a 2-year-old boy, doomed to wear his sisters' castoff dresses). Their mother is a beautiful aspiring concert pianist, sustained by the memory of a poem published when she was at school, who brings her family up in an atmosphere of cigarettes and classical music.

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    Breathe - Jackie Davis

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