The Earth Does Not Get Fat review:Julia Prendergast's moving story of a daughter

The Earth Does Not Get Fat

Julia Prendergast

UWA Publishing, $24.99

Chelsea is described by her teachers as the cream of the crop and they can't understand why she misses so much high school. The reason is that she is full-time carer for two family members: her mother, sunk deep in depression and living on pills and alcohol, and her grandfather, well down the road of dementia. For her own reasons, Chelsea will neither ask for help nor accept it, and soldiers on as best she can. The first few chapters of this novel are brilliant in their evocation of Chelsea's plight. The back-story, which begins to unfold with an unexpected message from the past and goes on to reveal her mother's tragedy, is less successful because it is so much harder to feel sympathy for the other characters and their addled lifestyle. But the conclusion is both moving and terrible, and pulls everything together.