The unrivalled ability with imagery and the expression of emotion characteristic of Gray’s poetry, also distinguished his prose, in his account of his parents painful marriage, and his own childhood, growing up on the north coast of New South Wales. The book offers the portrait of a period, told through the characters of the ‘extreme people’ that have influenced Gray- including his grandparents, aunts and lovers, and artists and writers such as Patrick White, Bruce Chatwin and Les Murray.