Eddy Smallbone (orphan) is grappling with identity, love, loss and religion. It's two years since he blew up his school life and the earthquakes felled his city. Home life is maddening. His pet-minding job is expanding in peculiar directions. And now the past and the future have come calling - in unexpected form.

As Eddy navigates his way through the Christchurch suburbs to Christmas, juggling competing responsibilities and an increasingly noisy interior world, he moves closer and closer to an overdue personal reckoning.

Eddy, Eddy is a richly layered novel, deftly written with humour and pathos: a love story, peopled with flawed and comical characters, both human and animal; and a story of grief, the way its punch may leave you floundering - and how others can help you find your way back.

Loosely mirroring A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Eddy, Eddy revels in language's stretch and play, the blessings of story and songs, and the giddy road to adulthood.

'This is a book without a single word out of place. It's profoundly moving. I loved it. ' Joan McKenzie, Whitcoulls

'Clever, funny and dark.' Kim Hill, RNZ

'Subtle, intense, very funny and very sad, this is a richly layered novel written with elegance, style and love.' Paddy Richardson, Newsroom

'A story rich in love and flawed characters and steeped in its author's love of language. An absolute beauty.' Louise, Wardini Books

'Intense, funny, shocking and exuberant, Eddy, Eddy is a brilliant, rich and effervescent novel about the myriad ways - sometimes right and sometimes dazzlingly wrong - that we find to save ourselves, when, like Eddy, the plates shift underneath our feet and the chasm opens.' Ursula Dubosarsky

'Lock your doors, put your phones on silent, and enjoy losing all track of time when you're introduced to Eddy and his complicated, endearing, off-beat world.' Emma Neale

'The most marvellous book. This is one of the most superb books I've ever read. Kate De Goldi is a genius. You will love this book.' Carole Beu, Nine to Noon, RNZ

At times laugh-out-loud funny and at others cry-out-loud sad. Eddy, Eddy tells the story of 19-year-old Eddy and the cast of unique characters (including a multitude of adorable and amusing pets) that fill his life while navigating a post-earthquake Christchurch. - Mel Loftus, Style.