A wonderfully compelling, ironic novel about families, old age and money, with all the tempo of a thriller.

Alice lands in Quantum land - a whole new Wonderland, smaller than an atom, where each attraction demonstrates a different aspect of quantum theory. In this book, the physicist makes complex concepts in quantum mechanics accessible.

'Thinner' - the old gypsy man barely whispers the word. Billy feels the touch of a withered hand on his cheek. 'Thinner' - the word, the old man's curse, has lodged in Billy's mind like a worm, eating at his flesh, at his reason. And with his despair, comes violence.

Cloudstreet: a broken-down house of former glories on the wrong side of the tracks, a place teeming with memories of its own, a place of shudders and shadows and spirits. From separate catastrophes, two families flee to the city and find themselves sharing this great sighing structure and beginning their lives again from scratch.

In 1968, 26-year-old Nick Darrow, younger son of the psychic priest Jon Darrow, begins to realize that his life is a mess. To all appearances he is a sober-living young man, but in fact he is indulging in the sexual experimentation of his age and is in revolt against Church teaching.