A moving and funny childhood memoir ... timeless.' AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S WEEKLY

'This is a special memoir. It is written with great feeling, imagination, humour and originality, and shows a writer with a distinct view of the world within and around her.' AUSTRALIAN BOOKSELLER & PUBLISHER MAGAZINE

Do you remember the day you realised you were you?

Catherine Therese does and invites you inside her head and upside down on a unique coming-of-age rollercoaster, chased by a purple feather duster through the sticky bitumen suburban streets of her 70s childhood - egged by Bernard King, terrorised by a frizzy-haired hooker with an axe - to going all the way with Meatloaf and a boy with half a thumb, in her achingly funny, intensely moving memoir ...

The story of a girl losing and finding herself in the secrets that shape her life; the power of family, silence, language, grog and love ... of becoming who you truly are. A mother before she's a woman; a girl who carries a shard of windscreen glass, votes for herself and believes in holding rain.

THE WEIGHT OF SILENCE is a brave beautiful book that will break your heart and mend it in the same breath.