When I migrated to Australia almost 14 years ago, there were two books everyone here was talking about. One was The Hand That Signed the Paper by Ukrainian-Australian Helen Demidenko, soon to be unmasked as hoaxer Anglo-Australian Helen Darville. The other was The Monkey's Mask, a lesbian thriller in verse by Dorothy Porter.

These two books and the interest in them introduced me to two things that are very specific to Australian publishing, and that remain the same to this day. One: Australians love the migrant experience, and by that they don't mean the experience of the British, American or Canadian migrant (hence a more recent literary hoax). Two: Australians love something quirky. Think of the very successful Aussie movies and they've all been a bit quirky.

And The Monkey's Mask is definitely quirky. I borrowed it off a workmate when I first came here, and always intended to buy my own copy but somehow never got round to it. Until yesterday, when I found it (and a few other great books, including Sharon Creech's Bloomability) for $2.90 at Dirt Cheap Books. It has everything: a murder mystery, sex, social comment and comedy all in 256 pages of verse. Here's the investigator, Jill, musing on the family function she's obliged to attend:

Family barbecues
hit the nerve
like a drunk dentist

why didn't they reject me
when I came out?

And her reflections on the then missing teenage girl, as described by the girl's parents:

it's not like her
she doesn't take drugs
she doesn't even smoke

she wants to be a journalist
photos

she's pretty
she's sweet
she's too good to be true

It's an incredibly clever book and justly won lots of awards here. Dorothy Porter sadly died last year, a huge loss to Australian literature.