In the Mood

Robert was surprised when he saw the atom blast on film, the mushroom cloud billowing up to the sky, so peaceful and final-looking. So natural-seeming that this was what would end it. ... ...Home was her, Catherine, in her blue cotton dress, dancing to the radio in the living room, the furniture pushed back against the walls to give her space. Him sitting on one of the chairs against the wall, entranced, not just by the glimpses of thigh and garter belt, her skirt in a perpetual flying ruffle, but her energy, her hips and hands and every part of her so alive. It's February 1946, and Robert Booker is just home from the war. Home is a pretty weatherboard house in Sydney, where his wife, Catherine, is waiting. They haven't seen each for three years, yet they are separated by so much more than time. Robert is haunted by the horrors of what he has seen and done, fighting in the humid jungles of New Guinea, and Catherine is carrying the guilt of her affair with a charismatic US Marine - and other secrets too painful to confront. With so much that's changed between them, can Catherine and Robert find their way back to each other again? Through intimately exploring the experience of one couple, and one war, Laura Bloom powerfully humanises the damage wrought by all wars to people everywhere. Crisply written and dramatic, IN THE MOOD is compelling fiction. - The Age Few books about war have been told from this perspective, which makes Bloom's book both a revelation and essential reading. IN THE MOOD is a tour de force of insightful and concentrated emotional writing. - The Spectator

It's the people traditionally left out of the frame who interest Laura the most, as well as what happens after what would be the climax in many stories. A couple reuniting after the war, in IN THE MOOD; a woman who has changed her name and started a new life, only to find her old life catching up with her, in THE CLEANSKIN; what happens when you break up with the perfect person, in CHOOSING ZOE. Laura's novels have been shortlisted for the NSW Literary Awards, the ABC Fiction Prize and the Young Australian Readers' Awards and published in France, the US and the UK. Laura grew up in Sydney and graduated with a BA, Communications from the University of Technology, Sydney. She has worked in the areas of youth policy, social justice and health promotion, and has travelled widely, including living for spells in Germany, India, the UK, and New Guinea. She now lives in a small town near Byron Bay on the east coast of Australia with her family.