Judith Clarke is, in my opinion, one of Australia’s finest writers, and Kalpana’s Dream does nothing to unsettle that view. Neema’s Indian great-grandmother, Kalpana, decides to visit her Australian family, her dream of ‘flying’ having prompted her to leave her village for the first time. But when Kalpana arrives, she realises that flying is not always about being airborne. Neema has just started high school. She and her friend Kate are dismayed to find that they’re ‘little again’, just as they were in grade one. The school is a maze in which it is easy to get lost; everything is confusingly suggestive of hidden mysteries. Why does Gull Oliver (the ‘flying boy’) seem strangely familiar, and who is pale Ms Dallimore’s boyfriend? Is he really Count Dracula, as Rose Red and Snow White have told Neema? The novel relies on fairy-tale references as a framework to the action in which Clarke visits ordinary experiences and invests them with extraordinary significance or magic.