Worry Doll
Overview
From the author of the acclaimed Cherry Beach comes a thrilling exploration of love and desire — obsessive, all-consuming, and impossible to look away from.
On an ordinary day, two women meet on a train.
Heloise — the older woman — lives with her boyfriend in Melbourne.
Lacey — the other woman — is from Aotearoa and studies the clouds.
What follows is anything but ordinary, a passionate affair that will consume them both in mismatched and maddening ways.
Propulsive and lyrical, Worry Doll examines desire, memory, and the delusion of love.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Rights held
- Other rights
- Paperback
- 210mm x 135mm
- 224 pages
- 9781761381850
- AUD$29.99
- 30 June 2026
- UK & Commonwealth (ex. Can)
- a4 Literary
Categories
Praise
‘Two women unmoor one another in Laura McPhee-Browne's claustrophobic third novel … Worry Doll suggests many things are difficult to hold: trauma, a person, or simply the words to express things. Gentle, lonely, dreamy, pained, Worry Doll is about yearning to unlock a person, whether it’s oneself or someone else.’
‘A gripping, utterly embodied story of desire. No one writes sensuality like McPhee-Browne. The pulsing, breathing prose is beguiling, while the slippery narrative haunts long after the final page.’
About the Author
Laura McPhee-Browne is a writer, social worker, and counsellor living in Melbourne on Wurundjeri land. Her short stories have been published widely in Australia. Her first two novels, Cherry Beach (2020) and Little Plum (2023), were published with Text Publishing to critical acclaim.
