All Four Quarters of the Moon by Shirley Marr
A big-hearted story of love and resilience, starring sisters and storytellers Peijing and Biju, a lost family finding their way, a Little World made of paper, a Jade Rabbit, and the ever-changing but constant moon.
Making mooncakes with Ah Ma for the Mid-Autumn Festival was the last day of Peijing’s old life. Now, adapting to their new life in Australia, Peijing thinks everything will turn out okay for her family as long as they have each other – but cracks are starting to appear.
Her little sister, Biju, needs Peijing to be the dependable big sister. Ma Ma is no longer herself; Ah Ma keeps forgetting who she is; and Ba Ba, who used to work seven days a week, is adjusting to being a hands-on dad.
How will Peijing cope with the uncertainties of her own little world while shouldering the burden of everyone else? And if Peijing’s family are the four quarters of the mooncake, where does she fit in?
Published 5 July 2022 | Publisher: Penguin Random House | RRP: AUD$16.99
Buy it at: Dymocks | Booktopia | A&R | Abbey’s | QBD
My Blurb (5 / 5 stars)
What we all should be is our favorite versions of ourselves
I am very privileged to have been gifted this copy by the author, Shirley Marr, and even as I got to read this second (my 12 yo got his hands on it first), I am truly humbled by the reading experience. Such a moving story overflowing with feelings and many sage advices.
The novel opens with a beautiful celebration of Mid Autumn festival amid the utter shambles of moving. The Guo family is leaving the very next day, to fly over the vast ocean, away from the embrace of their big noisy family. They are moving to Australia for a better job for Ba Ba (father), better education for the girls, and a better life for all the family. I remember my own big move to Australia and all the feelings which Peijing, our protagonist, struggled with; it’s big and complex and the author has caught all this perfectly in Peijing.
The Guo family is made up of some truly beautiful characters: wise Ah ma (grandmother), surprisingly involved Ba Ba (father), broken but strong Ma Ma (mother), a very good older sister (Peijing the protagonist), and a lively younger sister (Biju). They are not perfect but they are a family. While the story is told from Peijing’s perspectives and we see her struggles most (especially in the big adjustment of a new country), we see many bits and pieces of the others as they face their own struggles. It makes a very poignant tale.
While I arrive in Australia a decade later than the setting in this book, the very real push & pull between cultures, past & present, adults & children still do exist. Even today, I struggle on what I should adopt or preserve and instil in my own children! This novel explored all these and more. We were shown thoughts and feelings from different characters, both children and adult. I loved this part of the story as this is an ongoing struggle, every day, and I’m so happy to be able to share something like this with my children who are so lucky to have been born and living in Australia.
In between chapters, we are given snippets of stories Biju tells Peijing. These stories are mythology based orally told which she first heard from the older generation. These stories are weaved in throughout the main plot of the novel and also in a way, are reflected in life lessons. As usual, these stories usually have moral lessons but as you hear them from a 5 year old, their take (as you know) can be quite refreshing and sometimes, enlightening. I can’t help but snort laugh at some of their perspectives of these stories/morals.
All Four Quarters of the Moon is a story about a young girl. Of 2 sisters. Of everlasting friendships. Of cultures and growing up. Of the fragility and preciousness of life. But at the very centre of it, a heartwarming story of family.
My heartfelt thanks to the author for sending me an uncorrected proof of this book. All thoughts are honest & mine
About the author
Shirley Marr is a first-generation Chinese-Australian living in Perth and an author of young adult and children’s fiction, including YA novels Fury and Preloved, and children’s novels Little Jiang and A Glasshouse of Stars. She describes herself as having a Western mind and an Eastern heart. She likes to write in the space in the middle where they both collide, basing her stories on her own personal experiences of migration and growing up in Australia, along with the folk and fairy tales from her mother. Arriving in mainland Australia from Christmas Island as a seven-year-old in the 1980s and experiencing the good, the bad and the wonder that comes with culture shock, Shirley has been in love with reading and writing from that early age. Shirley is a universe full of stars and stories and hopes to share the many other novels that she has inside her.
Dr Kate Forsyth is an award-winning author, poet, and storyteller. Her most recent novel is The Crimson Thread, a reimagining of ‘The Minotaur in the Labyrinth’ myth set in Crete during the Nazi invasion and occupation of World War II.
Margaret Hickey is an award-winning author and playwright from North East Victoria. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and is deeply interested in rural lives and communities.
Fiona McIntosh is an internationally bestselling author of novels for adults and children. She co-founded an award-winning travel magazine with her husband, which they ran for fifteen years while raising their twin sons before she became a full-time author. Fiona roams the world researching and drawing inspiration for her novels, and runs a series of highly respected fiction masterclasses. She calls South Australia home.
Tea is an award winning Australian author of historical fiction. In a past life she was a teacher, a journalist and a farmer. These days she haunts museums and indulges her passion for storytelling. She is the bestselling author of several novels, including 
Tricia Stringer is a bestselling and award-winning author. Among others, her books include commercial fiction titles Table For Eight, The Model Wife and The Family Inheritance, the rural romances A Chance of Stormy Weather and Come Rain or Shine and historical sagas Heart of the Country, Dust on the Horizon and Jewel in the North, set in the 19th Century Flinders Ranges. Tricia lives in the beautiful Copper Coast region of South Australia, often exploring Australia’s diverse communities and landscapes, and shares this passion for the country and its people through her authentic stories and their vivid characters.
Rachael Johns is an English teacher by trade, a mum 24/7, a Diet Coke addict, a cat lover and chronic arachnophobe. She rarely sleeps and never irons. She is also the bestselling, ABIA-winning author of The Patterson Girls and a number of other romance and women’s fiction books, including her recent bestseller, Something to Talk About. Rachael is currently Australia’s leading writer of contemporary relationship stories around women’s issues, a genre she has coined ‘life-lit’. Rachael has finaled in a number of competitions, including the Australian Romance Readers Awards. Jilted (her first rural romance) won Favourite Australian Contemporary Romance in 2012, and The Patterson Girls won the 2016 Romance Writers of Australia RUBY Award and also the 2015 Australian Book Industry Award for General Fiction. She continually places in Booktopia’s Top 50 Aussie Authors poll. Rachael lives in the Swan Valley with her hyperactive husband, three mostly-gorgeous heroes-in-training, two ravenous cats, a cantankerous bird and a very badly-behaved dog.
Matthew Reilly is the internationally bestselling author of the Scarecrow series, the Jack West series and numerous standalone novels. His books are published in over 20 languages with worldwide sales of over 7 million copies. He is the director of his first movie, Interceptor, a Netflix film co-written with Stuart Beattie.
Ilsa Evans has published fourteen books across a range of genres, from light fiction and short stories to memoir, murder mystery and YA fantasy. Two of her books have been shortlisted for the prestigious Davitt (Sisters in Crime) Awards, while her novel about domestic violence, Broken, was an Australian best-seller and selected as Women’s Weekly Book of the Month. Ilsa also teaches creative writing students, writes social commentary, and has been published in several newspapers and online journals. In 2011, she received the Eliminating Violence Against Women (EVA) Award for online journalism.
Sandie Docker grew up in Coffs Harbour, and first fell in love with reading when her father introduced her to fantasy books as a teenager. Her love of fiction began when she first read Jane Austen for the HSC, but it wasn’t until she was taking a translation course at university that her Mandarin lecturer suggested she might have a knack for writing – a seed of an idea that sat quietly in the back of her mind while she lived overseas and travelled the world. Sandie first decided to put pen to paper (yes, she writes everything the old-fashioned way before hitting a keyboard) when living in London. Now back in Sydney with her husband and daughter, she writes every day.
Tien's Blurb 