Debra Adelaide’s new novel, When I Am Sixty-Four, is based on her lifelong friendship with the late Gabrielle Carey – a fellow author she first met in primary school, and bonded with over reading. Best known as the teenage author of Puberty Blues, Carey was also a lifelong literary scholar – particularly of James Joyce.
Adelaide has published novels and short-story collections since the mid-1990s and has won or been listed for significant literary awards. I was pleased – though also wary – to be invited to review this work of autofiction (a kind of fictionalised autobiography).
