The Girl Who Climbed on Rooves is a powerful, lyrical novel that explores memory, music, trauma, and mother-daughter inheritance.
Told in a series of fragmented yet interwoven memories, the novel follows Frances, a composer who revisits her past in an attempt to understand her emotionally volatile mother and the unspoken catastrophe that shaped their lives. As Frances uncovers secrets buried in family silences—ranging from childhood abuse to institutionalisation—she channels grief into artistic joy through music.
Structured like a four-movement symphony, the book is both a deeply personal narrative and a broader reflection on intergenerational trauma, creativity, and the resilience of the human spirit.
Contemporary, Literary, Creativity, Trauma, Music, Mother-Daughter Inheritance
About The Author
Sue Woolfe is an award-winning Australian novelist and essayist whose work spans literary fiction, short stories, non-fiction and cross-disciplinary adaptation.
Her novels include Painted Woman, runner-up for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and Leaning Towards Infinity, winner of the Christina Stead Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the region, and an international bestseller published widely in translation. Her other novels include The Secret Cure and Oldest Song in the World, drawn from her experience living in a remote Northern Territory Aboriginal community. Her short-story collection Do You Love Me or What? was runner-up for the NSW Women Writers’ Prize.
Sue Woolfe has also adapted her work for stage, radio and opera, and is widely known for her writing and research on creativity and the brain.
