Almost Sincerely

Debut book from Zoë Norton Lodge, Writer and Presenter on ABC’s The Checkout, Co-founder of Story Club

'You know the kind of person you wish you could write as well as but realise you never will? That’s Zoë Norton Lodge. If she didn’t make me laugh so much I might hate her.'  Andrew Denton

'Zoë Norton Lodge is unforgivably funny. I simultaneously adore her writing, and am secretly relieved not to be her direct relative.'  Annabel Crabb

'Zoe Norton Lodge is an outstanding talent and the very brightest of rising stars on the Australian creative landscape. She's so excellent that I'm even willing to write wanky things like that for things like this.'  Julian Morrow, The Chaser


When Zoë Norton Lodge was growing up in Annandale in the eighties and nineties, the self-proclaimed Heartland of the Inner West was a heady brew of somewhat maladjusted and genuinely unsettling residents. But Annandale was changing. New words like ‘architect’ and ‘labradoodle’ drifted out of the overabundance of cafés – and eventually entire weeks would go by with no backyard bomb explosions.

These stories of neighbourhood warfare, unsound relations, quashed dreams and facial disfigurement are told with Norton Lodge’s characteristic comic verve and eye for absurdity: encounter Greek grandparents whose decades-long resentment turns a colander into a weapon; a petrol-sodden Mamma; children sent to school with cat-food sandwiches; ‘distressed’ furniture; flying babies and other suburban wonders. 

Zoë Norton Lodge is also a writer and presenter on The Checkout and The Chaser’s Media Circus (ABC1), creator of the hit sellout live event-cum-highly obscure TV show Story Club(ABC2) and has had her work published in Best Australian Stories.

Reading group notes available here.