The Marriage of Rose Camilleri

An illuminating portrait of an unconventional marriage by bestselling and critically acclaimed author Robert Hough.

When Rose Camilleri and Scotty Larkin meet, neither expects to spend a lifetime together, navigating a sometimes turbulent marriage and scraping through the process of raising a family. When he first enters the bakery where she works, she is a new arrival from the tiny island nation of Malta, fond of rabbit stew and Hollywood cinema. He is a thoughtful printer’s assistant recently released from juvenile detention after stealing and swiftly totalling a stranger’s car. Even after years of marriage and two children together, Rose struggles to shake the idea that perhaps she should have held out for someone as voluble and optimistic as herself. But while some marriages are weakened by trauma, Rose and Scotty's union is strengthened by the act of survival, and they find their own kind of happiness along the way.

In The Marriage of Rose Camilleri, Robert Hough writes his larger-than-life characters with warmth, insight and humour, displaying the masterful approach to storytelling that gained his previous novels acclaim and several prestigious award nominations. Hough transports the reader into the epicentre of an unconventional love story, where he draws out captivating details from the fabric of an ordinary shared lifetime to create a story that lives in the moment and takes seriously the small but vital details of everyday life.

“Achingly real and dreamlike all at once, The Marriage of Rose Camilleri is a triumph of storytelling, finding the arresting truth at the heart of a seemingly ordinary life. Hough’s spare, elegant prose takes readers so deep into Rose's life it feels like you're living it with her. He spins the longing and need that runs like an underground river through Rose's existence into a thing of beauty.”