Hopscotch

Book excerpt

The journey left a trail of impressions in its wake: making sandwiches at Wallabi Point, where puffy clouds sat motionless in the sky and the ocean glowed gold; the neatly rounded hills of northern New South Wales looking slightly posh; cooling dips on beaches that stretched into infinity…. Whenever we stopped, the bush sizzled loudly like natural static, and when we picked up free wake-up coffee at a café-cum-museum full of old motorbikes, telephones and lists of the war dead, I found photocopies of a poem called, Miss Me, but Let Me Go.

Hopscotch

Paperback

by Denyse Devlin

Kadie Kingston is in flight and in pursuit. For reasons known only to herself, she is running from Milenko, the glorious Croatian she was due to marry, and she is chasing her best friend, who has fled their hometown of Cork to avoid facing sudden crushing grief.

Misunderstandings and missed messages see Kadie hauling her travel-phobic heartbroken self around the globe, starting in a mortuary in Stockholm and ending on a boat in Queensland. Along the way she gains perspective and allows herself a no-ties fling that is just the ticket to launch her new post-Milenko life.

But Milenko isn’t giving up on her that easily – and the fling might not be quite as forgettable as intended …

Published -

2006

by Penguin

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‘Denyse Devlin has done it again with this witty, thought-provoking and gripping tale. Pure escapism.’

Irish Times

‘A fantastic book with just the right amount of pathos and humour.’

Irish Independent

‘Told with the easy panache of a born writer . . . impossible to put down.’

Evening Herald

‘A breath of fresh air.’

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