Theresa Smith's Blog, page 23
September 26, 2023
Book Review: The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard
In November 1973, a fashion legend vanished, leaving behind only a white silk dress and the question: what really happened to Astrid Bricard?
Paris, 1917: Parentless sixteen-year-old Mizza Bricard makes a vow: to be remembered on her own terms. This promise drives her and her designs through the most exclusive couture houses in France until, finally, a legend is created – one that will endure for generations to come, but not the one she wanted.
New York, 1970: Designer Astrid Bricard arrives in bohemian Chelsea ready to change the fashion world. And she does – but cast in the role of muse to her lover, Hawk Jones. Just as Astrid’s star is finally poised to ascend in its own right, she mysteriously disappears, leaving her family in tatters and perpetuating the infamous Bricard family myth.
French Countryside, Present Day: Blythe Bricard is the daughter of fashion’s most infamous 70s power couple, but she turned her back on that world, and her passion for it, years ago. Fate, however, has other plans, and in a chateau over a whirlwind couple of weeks, Blythe will discover there is more to her iconic mother and grandmother – and herself – than she ever knew.
These three generations now have one chance to prove themselves. Can the women of the Bricard fashion dynasty finally rewrite their history?
Published by Hachette Australia
Released 27th September 2023
My Thoughts:This latest release from Natasha Lester offers readers a refreshing departure from her usual war-time settings. The 1970s comes alive with all the dazzle of the disco days and all the rage of the feminist movement and anti-Vietnam war protests of the era. There are three timelines covering three generations of women within this story – contemporary, 1970s, and the decades from 1910 through to 1950. All in all, it’s a huge story that is structured extremely well to ensure narrative flow and sync between the timelines.
‘Why is the world so full of older men all telling a young woman she won’t be able to do what she wants? How do women walk down the street beneath the weight of all the doubt everyone wants them to carry?’
Each new release by Natasha Lester has offered strong feminist themes, with a narrowing in on injustice and inequality within a particular industry, be it journalism, fashion, cosmetics, or business. Within this latest novel though, I see an anger woven into the narrative that has only been a simmer in her previous novels. Her passion for conveying the injustices of women throughout the decades within the fashion industry was at a fever pitch that resonates with the status of an author who is at the top of her game, confident in her own stories and angry enough at what her research has uncovered to write with a no holds barred approach. It was bloody fantastic, particularly to see this in a work of commercial fiction, which are not always as hard hitting as they could be.
Only one part of the novel let me down and that was the cinematic ending; it was little too happily ever after in a fairy tale fashion given the grit and emotion that had come before it. But really, this is a me issue, not an issue with the story, and it certainly fit the expectations of what the majority of readers will be seeking.
I can highly recommend The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard and I even think it would make a cracking good TV series, something along the lines of what was recently done with Daisy Jones and The Six. We can but dream…
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
September 23, 2023
Book Review: Trouble the Living by Francesca McDonnell Capossela
It’s the final years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and Bríd and her sister, Ina, try to maintain a stable life in a divided country. Pushed by her mother’s fanaticism and a family tragedy, Bríd joins the IRA and makes a devastating choice. Frightened and guilt ridden, she flees, leaving behind Ireland and her family for America.
Years later, her guilt and tragic history still buried, Bríd is an overprotective mother raising her sensitive daughter, Bernie, in Southern California. Growing up amid a different kind of social unrest, Bernie’s need for independence and her exploration of her sexuality drive a wedge into their already-fragile relationship. When mother and daughter are forced to return to Northern Ireland, they both must confront the past, the present, and the women they’ve become.
As they navigate their troubled legacies, mother and daughter untangle the threads of love, violence, and secrets that formed them — and that will stubbornly, beautifully, bind them forever.
Published by Lake Union Publishing
Released September 2023
My Thoughts:This was an exceptionally good novel. For me, it already had a formula tipped for reading success: Irish fiction, in particular a Northern Ireland setting within the years of ‘The Troubles’, grief, family, obligation and retribution – just to name a few key themes. It more than lived up to my expectations.
‘Though I had not thought of him much over the years, though it was to my mother and not my father that all my thoughts led, I could still feel the loss of him somewhere underneath my skin. Another piece of my home gone forever. Another person I couldn’t say goodbye to.’
Initially, I enjoyed Brid’s sections more than that of her daughter Bernie, but as the novel progressed, I began to enjoy it all equally. There was a lot within this story, it is not light in any way, shape or form. It deals with serious mental health issues, inter-generational PTS, terrorism, fanaticism, grief, retribution, religion, identity and sexuality. I appreciated the no holds barred approach the author took. While at a glance at this list, it might seem loaded, all of this was woven into the story with such a precise attention to balance and detail.
‘I tried to recall how I’d been taught to cope in the old days. The process of compartmentalising, stowing fear in your gums and carrying on. You don’t say anything, don’t answer even the most banal of questions. If you give them none of yourself, they cannot take more.’
Above all though, this is a story about healing. About family. About the things that bind women within the one family, about siblings, about the way we can miss so much of what is right in front of us, and about the way we can wound as well as love in equal measure.
‘It was what we all wanted. To choose our own freedom, to choose our own pain.’
I liked the timing of when the earlier part of this novel was set, at the end of the Troubles, when peace was within reach, but not unification; I appreciated the insight into how this might feel for those who had been fighting for so long – for generations. It was really well done. Highly recommended reading, particularly for those who like their stories infused with politics and history.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
September 15, 2023
Book Review: The Fraud by Zadie Smith
It is 1873. Mrs Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper – and cousin by marriage – of a once famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.
Mrs Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.
Andrew Bogle meanwhile grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realise. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.
The ‘Tichborne Trial’ captivates Mrs Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task…
Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity, and the mystery of ‘other people.’
Published by Penguin Random House Australia
Released September 2023
My Thoughts:This was an entirely entertaining and fascinating read. As far as narrators go, Eliza Touchet might just be one of my favourites to date.
‘What possesses people? Unhappiness, always. Happiness is otherwise occupied. It has an object on which to focus. It has daisies, it has snowdrifts. Unhappiness opens up the void, which then requires filling. With things like angry letters to The Times.’
The Fraud is a big book in many ways, not just on account of its number of pages. It’s a big story, at times complicated to follow as it traversed from one era to another, even more so in the section where we switched narrators to Andrew Bogle and became privy to his story and that of his extended family network in Jamaica. I got a little lost in this part, the cast of characters was vast and the style of narration didn’t lend itself to being easy to follow.
‘What really interested her in it all was the presumption. Of recognition, of respect – of attention itself. Why did he assume such things as his due? Was this what men assumed?’
The story is rather scathing, repeatedly so, of Charles Dickens, as a person more than his work, but I will admit this grew tiresome as I am a huge Dickens fan and feel his contribution to literature immense and worthy of note, not ridicule. The work of Charles Dickens remains in print whereas the work of William Ainsworth does not.
‘Mrs Touchet sighed and held her tongue. She had, in the past, stopped reading William’s novels near the end, midway through, and, on one occasion, after only the second chapter. But she had never before been defeated by the first page – until now.’
The never-ending court case was fascinating to me, that this actually happened, and was so drawn out! I enjoyed all of these sections immensely, particularly the commentary on it by the new Mrs Ainsworth, who was zealous in her support of the fraudster.
‘When young, she had never understood why old women dithered so. Why they led conversations down dead ends and almost always overstayed their welcome. She did not know then what it was to have no definition in the world, no role and no reason.’
On balance, the things about this novel I liked outweigh those I found tiresome. I think it’s an incredibly clever and highly entertaining story – a rollicking good read!
Book Review: The Sitter by Angela O’Keeffe
Paris, 2020. A writer is confined to her hotel room during the early days of the pandemic, struggling to finish a novel about Hortense Cezanne, wife and sometime muse of the famous painter. Dead for more than a century, Hortense has been reawakened by this creative endeavour, and now shadows the writer through the locked-down city. But Hortense, always subject to the gaze of others, is increasingly intrigued by the woman before her. Who is she and what event hides in her past?
Heartbreaking and perfectly formed, The Sitter explores the tension between artist and subject, and between the stories told about us and the stories we choose to tell.
Published by UQP
Released August 2023
My Thoughts:I’m quite partial to novels where art and literature intersect. The Sitter was a gorgeous read, every passage so beautifully crafted.
‘The chilly air from outside comes in through the crack in the window, just a little of it, seeking warmth; the neutral air from inside the room wafts out through the crack in the window, just a little of it, seeking adventure.’
There were so many moments throughout the story that lent itself to deep reflection on the part of the reader.
‘A jacket, she remembers suddenly, that she gave him for his birthday two years ago. And now her tears come, not for her father – those will come later – but for this: what was given in another time, a time of love, has gone on existing regardless.’
Simple things, like the significance of an old shawl, had me dwelling on the different things that I have kept myself throughout my life, and why I am so reluctant to ever part with them.
‘And everything that did not happen but should have happened is there in the weight of it, in the shape of it across her shoulders, in the hang of it down her back; all of it there in the stitches, in the complicated pattern, in the one or two mistakes.’
And Hortense, our ghostly narrator, how splendid she was with her 21st century curiosity about her writer and her bold honesty about her own past life as her husband’s muse and portrait sitter. The cover on the novel is a reproduction of one the (many) paintings that Cezanne did of his wife.
‘The hours, the weeks, the years spent sitting. It makes me breathless, now, to think of them. They were an odyssey for which I never packed a bag. An odyssey for which I never left my chair. An odyssey for which the sky through the window with its passing birds was the only measure of adventure I had.’
The Sitter is a stunning little novel that is well deserving of its status as the winner of the 2023 UQP Quentin Bryce Award. Highly recommended.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
September 5, 2023
Book Review: The Revels by Stacey Thomas
The stage is set and the witch-hunt is about to begin…
England, 1645.
After his half-brother dies, aspiring playwright Nicholas Pearce is apprenticed to Judge William Percival, an infamous former witch-hunter who is under pressure to resume his old profession.
In a country torn apart by civil war, with escalating tensions between Catholics and Protestants, Royalists and Roundheads, and rumours of witchcraft, Nicholas hides a secret: the dead sing. He hears their secrets, but will he find the courage to speak up to save innocent lives, even if it means putting himself in great danger?
A spellbinding debut novel perfect for fans of Stacey Halls, Laura Purcell and Bridget Collins.
Released 30th August 2023
My Thoughts:Moody, atmospheric, gothic historical fiction is my favourite. Add in witches, or more specifically, historical witch trials, and I’m hooked from the outset. The Revels was sublime from the start. Such a smooth and lyrical writing style, a wholly unique narrator, and a storyline with roots deep in historical fact.
‘Witch-hunts are no more than a revel. The price of admission your complacent disregard for the innocents you push into their paths.’
Our narrator, Nicholas, is a young man who believes himself to be a witch, or at least, in possession of a supernatural instinct that others would label as witchcraft. He can hear the dead sing, specifically, the songs of their deaths. He carries the burden of being alive when his half-brother, the true heir of the family, is recently dead, killed in the war that is raging in the background. Clothed in his brother’s finery, his father, apprentices him to a judge, William Percival, who is also a former witch-hunter, and who turns out to be an entirely different man to what Nicholas expects.
“What made you leave the profession?”
“I had the foresight to realise it was becoming a relic of the past. King Charles saw us as no more than a reminder of his father, a bored monarch whose obsession with the supernatural soon turned to deer hunting. I saw the writing on the wall then, just as I see myself clearly today. Kin James set me to hunt witches and his son put me on the Star Chamber to root out dissenters. I am not a witch-hunter. I am a persecutor of men, and I am well-bred for the work.”
As well as a tale of witch-hunting, this is a story of how easily desperate people can be swayed to turn on each other. The story is filled with doubt at every turn, who can be trusted, who should be avoided, and who has been bewitched. The Revels is also a coming-of-age story for Nicholas, who must learn to stop fearing who he is, embrace his mother’s legacy and step out of the shadow of his brother and the guilt that binds them, release himself from his father’s manipulations, and judge for himself who is evil and who is not.
‘I would have drowned had my mother not crowned me in her songs. Her melody kept the dead muffled until I was strong enough to silence them in turn. She threaded her history in my blood and waited all these years for me to unravel it. A part of her will wait still.’
The above-mentioned reference to Stacey Halls, Laura Purcell and Bridget Collins is bang on. I have read each of those authors and they are queens within this genre. The comparison is a worthy one. Highly recommended.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
September 1, 2023
The Month That Was…
Life:
And just like that, winter left with the arrival of our first summer storm! Zeus is not a fan of storms…
He prefers to spend them curled up beside my bed, pretending they’re not happening.
I’ve been doing a bit of baking this month, using up over ripe bananas and creating my first ever red velvet cake from scratch. That vivid red colour! It tasted good too…
Today is the first day of spring and in the spirit of this, here are some beautiful wild flowers that I picked up on the weekend on account of the gorgeous colours…
Joke of the month:
A bookish one for this month!
What I’ve been watching:
There’s a distinct bookish theme to my viewing this month. Good Omens 2, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Emily, The Essex Serpent, and The Winter King are all based on or inspired by books!
If you’re looking for something light-hearted and truly funny to watch, I recommend Outnumbered. M and I are thoroughly enjoying this one. It’s British, very funny, super relatable, and there are five seasons to enjoy. Bliss!
What I’ve been reading:
Well look at this! A very good month of reading with nine books this month.
My reading of Wuthering Heights was linked with my watching of Emily. I’ve already written about this here, so no need to elaborate further.
Two out of the nine were five star reads, A Light in the Dark and The Heart is a Star. Fours stars were bestowed upon Feast, One Day We’re All Going to Die, Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night, Atalanta, and The Watchful Wife. Three stars to Sister of Mine. All in all, a very good reading month! If only they could all be so good.
Until next month…good reading!
August 30, 2023
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights is the tale of two families both joined and riven by love and hate. Cathy is a beautiful and wilful young woman torn between her soft-hearted husband and Heathcliff, the passionate and resentful man who has loved her since childhood. The power of their bond creates a maelstrom of cruelty and violence which will leave one of them dead and cast a shadow over the lives of their children.
Emily Brontë’s novel remains a stunningly original and shocking exploration of obsessive passion.
First published in 1847, it has remained well read, highly acclaimed, and in circulation ever since. Emily Brontë died in 1848 after catching a cold at her brother’s funeral. Wuthering Heights was her only novel.
I first read Wuthering Heights when I was in my early twenties, when I read most of the more well-known classics for the first time. I was not a fan. I wonder now, looking back, if this was because I read it on the back of reading all of Jane Austen’s work, which of course, is very different in theme and tone. It may have also been to do with expectations. Wuthering Heights has long been sold as a story of passion and undying love, which has translated all too often into being considered a love story, or even more misleading, a romance. Let’s just start right there: Wuthering Heights is not a romance. It’s not even a love story. What it is, is a story of obsession and diabolical revenge. Cathy and Heathcliffe are not the couple that you quote at your wedding; theirs was more the original toxic relationship. I will never be swayed from that opinion. Perhaps it could just be age. Twenty-five years on from my first read, I feel as though I have read an entirely different novel to the one I read originally.
I had no plans to ever read Wuthering Heights again, but the recent film, Emily, caught my attention and I watched it a few weeks ago and was instantly drawn to giving her one and only novel another chance. Written and directed by Frances O’Connor in her directorial debut, it is a part-fictional portrait of Emily Brontë. I read in an interview with O’Connor that Emily is inspired by both the author’s life and Wuthering Heights, in that, she blends the two to create a fictional biography, rather than a more traditional autobiographical account. The film is sublime. I loved it. And I could recognise scenes from Wuthering Heights, here and there, reworked into the film within the context of Emily’s life, giving the impression that she may have been inspired by certain real-life events, if not actually, then thematically, when penning her novel. I’m sure there are plenty of hardcore Wuthering Heights fans out there who detest the film and the way O’Connor portrayed Emily, particularly the more lascivious side of her, but O’Connor herself professed a deep admiration for Wuthering Heights and Emily Brontë and I enjoyed seeing the end result of where that creative vision and admiration led her.
I toyed with the idea of a reread for about two weeks, but then one day during a lunch break at work, I downloaded a copy to my Kobo and just started reading. I was immediately drawn into it and remained so for the whole 600 pages, which I read across four days. It’s not my favourite classic, and Emily has not become my favourite Brontë. That honour still rests upon Anne’s shoulders, with Charlotte a close second. But I do appreciate Wuthering Heights now in a way I was unable to previously, and I admire Emily for her bold vision and the way in which she used her characters to demonstrate the very fine line between love and hate, passion and fury, and the spoils of greed and envy.
I still despise Cathy, she is one of the most spoilt and detestable characters from literature, ever. And don’t even get me started on Heathcliffe. I don’t want to hear about hidden depths or that he was the product of being mistreated and deserves our sympathy…the man was one thing, and one thing only. Those two, with their toxic addiction to each other, ruined the lives of everyone around them, not just within their own generation, but within the next one as well. But I can hate them and still like the book. I have no idea at all what Joseph, the groundsman, was saying. Ever. All I got was a general gist that he hated everyone and was very religious. And I feel that the idea that Nelly (Ellen), the nursemaid/narrator, could retell a decades old story, word for word, a major stretch, plot wise. But again, I can accept these things and still like the novel.
Some favourite quotes:
…because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same…
Yes, Cathy, your souls were indeed the same. Black as pitch, and self-centred to the core. Of course, this quote has long been misrepresented as something romantic – don’t get me started.
‘What has Heathcliffe done to you?’ I asked. ‘In what has he wronged you, to warrant this appalling hatred? Wouldn’t it be wiser to bid him quit the house?’
‘No!’ thundered Earnshaw, ‘should he offer to leave me, he’s a dead man, persuade him to attempt it, and you are a murderess! Am I to lose all, without a chance of retrieval? Is Hareton to be a beggar? Oh, damnation! I will have it back; and I’ll have his gold too; and then his blood; and hell shall have his soul! It will be ten times blacker with that guest than ever it was before!’
Earnshaw really made it way too easy for Heathcliffe to exact his revenge. And unfortunately, particularly for Hareton, Linton and Cathy junior, it took everyone way too long to see what he was up to.
Poor thing, I never considered what she did with herself after tea. And though frequently, when she looked in to bid me good night I remarked a fresh colour in her cheeks, and a pinkness over her slender fingers; instead of fancying the hue borrowed from a cold ride across the moors, I laid it to the charge of a hot fire in the library.
Ahh, Ellen. There is a special place for you in my heart, with all you’d seen and heard to that point, to remain so entirely blind and trusting.
Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval were his first prompters to higher pursuits; and instead of guarding him from one, and winning the other, his endeavours to raise himself produced just the contrary result.
Where we see exactly just how far the apple falls from the tree as Cathy junior channels Cathy senior with a sharply cruel tongue and a scornful attitude towards Hareton, who is possibly the most wronged character in all of English literature.
In summary, Wuthering Heights is a case in point for getting out of the neighborhood. These people needed to get away from each other. Revenge is the beating heart of Wuthering Heights, and I’ll say one thing for Heathcliffe, he certainly took his in spades. For me, Wuthering Heights is a gothic tragedy, and by viewing it through that lens, I can appreciate it on a whole new level.
August 29, 2023
Book Review: A Light in the Dark by Allee Richards
The first year of high school brought Iris into a type of privilege she’d never felt part of. But then she found her place. The magic of performing in school musicals and the freedom of the stage opened her up to a new world. Her drama teacher gave her a glimpse of the adult she wanted to be. But, just like in the theatre, when the spotlight is off you, it can be a lonely and neglected existence. For Iris, jealousy and bitterness will grow. For Nina, something more dangerous. Reckless anger and rumours will come to a head. And, years later, there is a reckoning for them all.
A Light in the Dark is a compelling novel that distils the magic of theatre as the backdrop for an unforgettable examination of friendship, vulnerability, power and abuse.
Published by Hachette Australia
Released 30th August 2023
My Thoughts:Earlier this year I read Small Joys of Real Life, the debut novel by Allee Richards. One perk of reading a brilliant novel long after its release is that you don’t have to wait too long for the author’s next book! And here that next book is: A Light in the Dark. Once again, Allee Richards has gifted us a story that is both devastating and uplifting all at once. Themes of grief, family relationships, and friendship intermingle in this story, with a side of repressed trauma and teenage recklessness. Sounds heavy, I know, and at times it was, but it’s not a depressing or mournful read – just a very real one.
‘Happiness doesn’t preclude sadness. She’s learning the two feelings can sit on the same shelf.’
Half of the novel is about Iris at high school, specifically her involvement with the school musicals and her so called nemesis, Nina. Teenage jealousies abound in the world of high school musical theatre and the fluidity of the environment allows a more sinister element to flourish under the direction of the young and hip musical theatre director. The abuse of power that takes place within these formative years for Iris and Nina has lasting repercussions on them both.
The second half of the novel unfolds when Iris is in her early twenties, grieving the fresh loss of her mother and struggling to navigate her way through everyday life, on the cusp of addiction. News of Nina and an allegation she has made against their former musical theatre director further derails Iris and brings to the fore trauma she has repressed and minimised since high school. Allee Richards deftly examines the way in which we can minimise the things that happen to us in order to deal with them best and how our memories of people and events can take on a different hue, dependent upon our own perceptions and feelings within any given moment.
I loved this novel as much as I loved her first and can say with conviction that Allee Richards is one of my favourite authors now, a queen of contemporary life-lit. The way she writes about grief is raw and real, demonstrating with sensitivity the way in which grief is not something you necessarily get over, but rather, something that shifts within you to a more bearable space. I’m excited to see what she writes next.
Thanks to the publisher for the copy.
August 27, 2023
Book Review: One Day We’re All Going to Die by Elise Esther Hearst
At 27, Naomi is just trying to be a normal person. A normal person who works at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, who cares for lost things, found things, sacred things and her family. A person who finds herself going on bad blind dates, having cringe-worthy sex, a tumultuous, toxic affair, and falling for a man called Moses.
Being a normal person would be easy and fine if she didn’t bear the weight of the unspoken grief of Cookie, her Holocaust-survivor grandmother. It would all be fine if she just knew how to be, without feeling the pull of expectation, the fear of disappointing others (men, friends, her parents, humanity), and that pesky problem of being attracted to all the wrong people (according to her parents, anyway).
By endlessly trying to please everyone around her, Naomi can’t seem to figure out what she wants for herself, or how to get it. With echoes of the dead and dying all about her, in objects, in story, in her grandmother’s firm grasp, Naomi isn’t quite sure she knows how to be a normal person, but she is going to try.
This fiercely honest, funny and fearless novel is a deep dive into the complex questions that surround culture, identity politics and generational trauma in contemporary Australia. Both a sadly affectionate and brilliantly unsparing examination of the glorious, awkward, messiness of life.
Released 30 August 2023
My Thoughts:Coming of age/find-yourself-in-your-twenties novels have fast become the ‘in-thing’. I’m a self-confessed fan of this genre, despite being long out of my twenties. There’s a fresh appeal to this new intake, they’ve left the rom-com cheesy tropes behind and instead offer readers an honest, messy, real, emotional rollercoaster of a read that each of us, on some level, no matter our ages, can relate to.
One Day We’re All Going to Die is the story of 27-year-old Naomi, Jewish, single, living in Melbourne in a house bought for by her overprotective parents who are overly involved in every aspect of her life, thoroughly enjoying her job as a curator at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in between regularly visiting her grandparents in an aged care facility, the weight of her ancestors and the expectations that come with their collective sacrifices resting heavily across her shoulders.
Naomi swiftly derails her life when she enters into an affair with her boss, a married Jewish man. He takes advantage of Naomi in a classic toxic abuse of power within the workplace move that sees her giving up her job and her independence when it all inevitably crashes and burns. Enter the finding yourself stage of this story.
The dialogue within this story between Naomi and her parents and most especially her grandmother, Cookie, was sparkling and on point one hundred percent of the time. The story is populated with some utterly fantastic scenes. It’s also got its fair share of heartbreaking moments too.
I really enjoyed this exposure to the inner workings of an Australian Jewish family, written by an Australian Jewish woman. The feeling of lived experiences was ever present throughout the novel and the authenticity of Naomi, and her family, made it all the more of an enjoyable read for me. I feel like this novel would make a great television series.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
August 24, 2023
Book Review: Sister of Mine by Laurie Petrou
Two sisters. One fire. A secret that won’t burn out.
The Grayson sisters are trouble. Everyone in their small town knows it. But no-one can know of the secret that binds them together.
Hattie is the light. Penny is the darkness. Together, they have balance.
But one night the balance is toppled. A match is struck. A fire is started. A cruel husband is killed. The potential for a new life flickers in the fire’s embers, but resentment, guilt, and jealousy suffocate like smoke.
Their lives have been engulfed in flames – will they ever be able to put them out?
Published by New South Books – Verve Books
Released August 2023
My Thoughts:Penny and Hattie are sisters, living together as adults in their childhood home. Their father bolted when they were young, and their mother died when Penny was away at college and Hattie was still a teenager living at home. There are layers of resentment and jealously between the sisters, despite their closeness. Along with this lies a secret, a big one, linking the sisters with a toxic dependency that does neither of them any good.
This was an average read for me. There were several plot twists along the way, but they were all predictable. The story was also narrated in a hindsight fashion by Penny, a narrative technique I’m not a fan of. It just doesn’t come off as natural. It’s like someone is giving you a 250-page confession. By the end of this novel, I didn’t like either of the sisters and didn’t particularly care what happened to them. It was a quick read, compulsive at times, but overall, not for me.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
