Each interviewee, from Li Cunxin to Fiona Patten to Robin Bowles, has the kind of story that should be worth telling: the book takes in a vast array of extraordinary and ordinary facets of the Australian experience (immigration, dysfunctional – and functional – families, domestic abuse, Alzheimer's, adoption, etc.). But it is impossible to skirt the fact that Things My Mother Taught Me is not very interesting to read.

The one genuine exception is the final chapter, told by Halliday herself. She is able to expand and unfurl her memoirette, to lift off from those ordinary moments she wants to explore, gripping the reader with a personal story, personally told. The relationship she describes is complicated and affecting. If this had been a book resounding with cacophony, it would have been a success; instead it is dulled by sameness.