29/05/2026
🍃This book is almost tactile. Let sprawling fungi and a carpet of moss pull you into the world of Mantle. Step into the forest and slow down. Lay among lichen, shiver from the southerly winds. We need every Tasmanian to read this book, and we need you to read it now.
🌘Ursula returns to Lutruwita as her mother’s health deteriorates. She is both a local and a stranger here, in the land of bobbly fleeces, unwashed bandanas, soil inside Blundstones. Every encounter with the Tasmanians she meets, the fisherman of the salmon farms, the barmen of the oldest pubs of the island state, are deep and changing connections. This, and everything else about Mantle, encapsulates what has caused me to fall in love with life here as a new arrival. The ruggedness and ruralness. A microbial, at oneness with the environment. A permission to slow down and be present. Ursula often seems to feel more at home among nature than alongside other humans; ‘The world looks kind of storybook, unreal and too beautiful for words’. She rests her cheek against moss and runs her fingers along tree trunks, using the forest as therapy, searching for answers in the bush rather than the modern world. It awakens a sensibility in her that seems to have been lacking in her life before relocating - ‘Nothing is more tender than a new leaf’.
🍂We can't wait to meet Romy Thursday 4th June here at the shop and talk about how delictible this novel is, grab your tickets in store, online or over the phone.
