Eddy, Eddy by Kate De Goldi

A coming of age story, a love story, an earthquake story and a story of finding your way back from grief.

Eddy Smallbone (orphan) is grappling with identity, love, loss and religion. It's two years since he blew up his school life and the earthquakes felled his city. Home life is maddening. His pet-minding job is expanding in peculiar directions. And now the past and the future have come calling – in unexpected form. As Eddy navigates his way through the Christchurch suburbs to Christmas, juggling competing responsibilities and an increasingly noisy interior world, he moves closer and closer to an overdue personal reckoning.

Eddy, Eddy is a richly layered novel, written with humour and pathos: a love story, peopled with flawed and comical characters, both human and animal; and a story of grief, the way its punch may leave you floundering - and how others can help you find your way back.