The reader is taken deep into Dylan’s mind and heart and senses, in ways that are sometimes deeply humorous, and at other times deeply painful. This wonderful Australian debut paints a whirling, raging, intense portrait of a teen who experiences the world in ways that she struggles to communicate to others. When they reach their unexpected destination, Dylan comes face to face with part of her family and a side of herself she’s never wanted to own. Fourteen-year-old Dylan’s way of being in the world, and her unique internal logic, chafe against everything around her, leading to a string of accidents and incidents that test Pat’s patience. Dylan and Pat are locked into their own separate grief, and don’t understand each other most of the time. The road there is winding, hot and dusty beer salesman Pat drops in on pubs along the way to check on his accounts, and to play the pokies too. Dylan and Pat drive towards the ocean and the boat that Dylan is convinced will take her to Paris, in the country where her mother was born.

I wanted to remember every line but it felt like trying to catch handfuls of stars-in the end every piece fell into place so beautifully and I sat there in gobsmacked silence.you know the feeling that hits after you've read an extraordinary book? Metal Fish, Falling Snow is one of the most moving books I've read in ages and I'll be thinking about it for a long time.Her mother has passed away, and now Dylan has to leave her small rural home town of Beyen, in the company of her mother’s boyfriend, Pat. 'A breathtaking debut with such an assured, original voice-one page and I was all in. Metal Fish, Falling Snow is Cath's first novel. She holds an MA in screenwriting and a PhD in Danish screenwriting practices. Cath is also an award-winning screenwriter, teacher and filmmaker. Though raised in Australia she has also lived in Scotland and Belgium. Through families lost and found, this own-voices story celebrates the resilience of the human heart and our need to know who we truly are.īorn in Guyana, Cath Moore is of Irish/Afro-Caribbean heritage.

Metal Fish, Falling Snow is a warm, funny and highly original portrait of a young girl's search for identity and her struggle to deal with grief.

One that will be broken when he leaves her with the family she has never known. As they travel through remote towns further and further from the water that Dylan longs for, she and Pat form an unlikely bond. Paris, Dylan imagines, is a place where her black skin won't make her stand out, a place where she might feel she belongs.īut when she loses her mother in a freak accident, Dylan finds herself on a very different journey: a road trip across outback Australia in the care of her mother's grieving boyfriend, Pat. Dylan and her adored French mother dream of one day sailing across the ocean to France.

Metal Fish, Falling Snow by Cath Moore