Cat Thao writes ''to honour my family, especially my parents''.
She was born in Thailand to Vietnamese parents and raised in western Sydney.
In the first section, she tells of her parents, their family background in Vietnam and the challenges and dangers to them of the decade after 1969 in a country consumed by opposing factions and uncertain and treacherous shifts in power and control.
Eventually they risked walking through a Cambodia described as ''a place of utter madness and terror'' into Thailand and being recognised as legitimate refugees who could settle in Australia.
The second section describes a scene of the challenges of being outsiders in a strange country and the associated trials.
The pervading sense of this period is isolation, difference and the ever-present sewing machines whose sound was the background to life and which accompanied the family on their frequent moves.
In subtle yet incisive images, Cat Thao acknowledges a range of people and organisations that were part of her own move to public and international success and achievement, while still feeling outside.
The pride of her parents as they witness her admission to the Bar of the NSW Supreme Court presents a fitting sense of finally arriving.
Kate Grenville comes to this memoir with a record of writing several well-regarded novels.
She wants to tell her mother's story as she found fragments of stories left for her to develop and expand.
She acknowledges: ''Writing of a real person, especially your own mother is difficult. Thinking about your mother as a woman, with a private inner life, is daunting.''
While the background may be ordinary, Kate's mother Nance is far from that.
She became a registered pharmacist, and held a family together financially and emotionally.
Kate crafts elegant descriptions of schools that impacted on her, financial disasters that challenged her pride, colleagues who reflected the accepted view of female capacity and underestimated her.
Family photos enhance the reality of this gentle expression of a presence where ''life wasn't going to hand anything to you. You had to go out and find it''.
Hannie Rayson, a screenwriter and playwright, allows herself the luxury of bringing her considerable technical skills to a focus on a collection of episodes in her own life.
These are polished with insight and humour and are a delightfully easy and rewarding read.
• Willie Campbell is a Dunedin educator.
