Diana Reid
Signs of Damage
“Diana Reid’s third book is an engrossing, meticulously crafted drama that explores memory, trauma, repression and self-preservation, examining how these themes intersect, overlap, are misinterpreted or deliberately distorted to devastating consequences.”
Ultimo Press, 2025
It was as if the present and the past were linked: a spider’s web, wherein a shock to one strand could make the whole structure shake.
The Kelly family’s idyllic holiday in the south of France is disturbed when Cass, a thirteen-year-old girl, goes missing. She’s discovered several hours later with no visible signs of injury. Everyone present dismisses the incident as a close brush with tragedy.
Sixteen years later, at a funeral for a member of the Kelly family, Cass collapses. The present and the past start to collide as buried secrets come to light and old doubts resurface. What really happened to Cass in the south of France? And what’s wrong with her now?
A gripping tale of unravelling memories and moral ambiguities, Signs of Damage wrestles with the difference between understanding other people, and trying to explain them.
About the Author
Diana Reid is the Australian author of the bestselling novels Love & Virtue and Seeing Other People. Her debut, Love & Virtue, won the ABIA Book of the Year Award, the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year Award, the ABA Booksellers’ Choice Fiction Book of the Year Award, and the MUD Literary Prize. She was also named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist in 2022. Born in Sydney, she is currently based in London. Signs of Damage is her third novel.