Theresa Smith's Blog, page 6
May 2, 2025
Book Review: Where the Birds Call Her Name by Claire van Ryn
Broome 2023: when Saskia’s free-spirited mother leaves her a caravan in her will, it doesn’t make sense. Saskia is a schoolteacher, tied to plans and schedules, even if they are beginning to feel restrictive. Then she finds clues in the van about her mother’s mysterious past, setting her on a journey to Tasmania with her young daughter Anouk, who shares her late grandmother’s fascination with birds.
In 1968, teenager Greta De Winter seeks solace in the Stanley wetlands, a swamp that attracts all manner of wildlife. Her father is the local councillor and her mother a taxidermist, working to create bird dioramas for the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. But while the De Winter household seems harmless from the outside, a dark secret hides within.
When Saskia and Anouk arrive in Stanley, they search for the missing pieces to the puzzle of Greta’s tragic childhood. In the process of uncovering her family history, Saskia realises that her mother’s final act might also enable her to rediscover who she really is, and what she is truly capable of.
Set in the breathtaking landscape of Tasmania’s majestic north-west, this is a moving and highly evocative novel of family bonds and betrayals, by the bestselling author of The Secrets of the Huon Wren.
Released March 2025
My Thoughts:Where the Birds Call Her Name is a brilliant and absorbing family drama unfolding over two timelines: 1968 and 2023.
When Saskia’s mother leaves her a caravan in her will, she thinks her mother might have been having a lend of her, but facing down another year as a burnt out primary school teacher whilst weighted down with the grief of losing her mother suddenly before Christmas, she decides to use a ticket for the ferry from Victoria to Tasmania that she finds inside the van, and takes off with her daughter on a cross country road trip.
Along the way, she loses herself in reading a journal of her mother’s dated from 1968, the year her mother left Tasmania. What she reads in the pages of the diary are both inspiring as to who her mother was in her 16th year and shocking in terms of her homelife. Upon arriving in Tasmania, she learns more of her family mystery and finds herself and a new pathway in the process.
Usually, with a dual timeline novel,one storyline will be stronger than the other, but I didn’t find that with this novel. I was engaged all the way through and invested in the mystery as well empathetic to Saskia’s situation. The 1968 timeline did an exceptional job of demonstrating coercive control in action, which of course would not have even been a recognised form of domestic violence back then, but it was interesting to see the perceptions of those in the community who knew that ‘something was not quite right in that household’.
Some sections are not for the faint-hearted when it came to the taxidermy, although I found it fascinating, as a bird lover, it pulled me up at first. The science and historical aspect of taxidermy is very interesting, though. Surprisingly, we discover at the end that this novel is not entirely fictitious. I was shocked to realise that the wetland drained in the story was indeed drained in real life for pasture, leading to the displacement of many species of waterbirds and other wetlands fauna and flora – an entire ecosystem erased.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and recommend it widely.
Thanks to Penguin Australia for the review copy.
April 29, 2025
Book Review: The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding.
Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can’t read her future but seems to resolve his.
Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He’s determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.
Kismet’s mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary’s family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter’s and her own.
Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. How much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.
The Mighty Red is a novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. It is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them. As with every book this great modern master writes, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor.
A new novel by Louise Erdrich is a major literary event; gorgeous and heartrending, The Mighty Red is a triumph.
My Thoughts:Louise Erdrich is one of my favourite American novelists, and with her latest, The Mighty Red, she has reinforced her remarkable ability to write powerful novels that both entertain and inform within a literary context.
The Mighty Red is set in the Red River Valley in the upper Midwest of the United States and kicks off during 2008 against a background of the financial crash and gradual industrialisation of area agriculture. The focus of the novel is two pronged: human relationships and our need for community along with the economic and environmental impact of country-wide financial practices on the lives of working Americans.
The audio book production was fantastic. It’s a long novel, with many story threads weaving in and out of the various characters’ lives, but it was never hard to keep track of what was going on and it was laugh out loud funny over and over again. The narration was so well done.
This story has impact on so many levels, but of course, the most impactful of all was the snow mobile accident and the deaths of the two boys, taking their solid friend group from five to three, and forever changing the lives of so many. A reminder about the dangers of combining drugs and alcohol with vehicles and the unchecked faith young people have in their own mortality.
What I love most about Louise Erdrich’s novels is the hope that she runs through them. It’s there, threaded through, reminding the reader that yes, this is life, this is history, this is politics, so many things are out of our control, but some things remain within our grasp. Some things can’t be taken away. Hope, community, human relationships; that’s life, at its core. I have so much love for this novel.
April 26, 2025
Book Review: Three Juliets by Minnie Darke
THREE DRESSES . . . THREE DAUGHTERS . . . ONE SEARCH . . .
In 1980, designer Claudie Miller is a household name. Girls are begging their mothers to make them her famous dress, the ‘Juliet’.
But there’s a big hole in Claudie’s life – sixteen years ago she was forced to give up her baby for adoption. Now she’s in a race to track her daughter down before it’s too late.
In 1980, Roisin, Miranda and Bindi are turning sixteen on the same day. Raised in different families, in different parts of the country, they know nothing about each other . . . or their connection to the dress every teenager is talking about.
But the Juliet was designed with one of them in mind – and its threads are slowly pulling them closer to the truth.
Published by Penguin Books Australia
Released April 2025
My Thoughts:I absolutely adored Three Juliets, the latest release by Minnie Darke, who is a firm favourite of mine. Three Juliets is about the forced adoptions that were commonplace in Australia during the 1960s through to the mid-1970s. Given the tens of thousands of babies that were adopted within those years, many Australians of my generation and older have a personal link to this sad portion of our country’s history. I found this to be a profoundly moving novel that stirred up a range of emotions within me.
I’ve read a few novels about the forced adoptions, and all of them have been very good, but what I liked most about this one was the focus on the children who were adopted. Specifically, as they reached adulthood, the impact of learning that not only were they adopted, but that their mothers were forced into giving them up. There was a great deal of social history woven into this story, which I devoured.
A special shout out to Roisin, who was my favourite Juliet and whose own story made my heart ache. I think Roisin’s experiences may mirror the experiences of many others.
Three Juliets is quite a long novel, but I never felt the length of it. I powered through the pages, devouring it over two days. Minnie Darke has carved out a place for herself as a queen when it comes to writing fiction that plays on the heartstrings like a harp in an orchestra. I adore her writing and, at this point, would probably even five-star her shopping list.
But to finish, I just want to say thanks to Minnie for writing this story. For all the people who were separated from their families, who never got to meet them or met them, and it didn’t work out. For all those who connected, only to lose that person again. This novel is for you.
Thanks to Penguin Books Australia for the review copy.
April 24, 2025
Book Review: Love Unedited by Caro Llewellyn
It was the impossibility of him that kept her coming back.
Edna gave up everything when she fell in love with an acclaimed writer, leaving Australia and moving to New York, where the publishing and literary scene was the backdrop to their secret story.
When Molly, an Australian editor working in New York, discovers a novel by an anonymous author, she is drawn intimately into the story. She becomes determined to find the author and know how the story ends – not imagining that she will uncover shocking truths about her own life along the way.
A compelling literary mystery about desire, creativity, food, longing and the ever-shifting power dynamics of love.
Published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Released February 2025
My Thoughts:Love Unedited by Caro Llewellyn was a highly anticipated read for me, but it fell flat, unfortunately. I have read one previous book by Caro Llewellyn, her memoir Diving into Glass, and it also disappointed me. Love Unedited is her fifth book, but first novel.
There are three stories playing out in this novel. One of these stories is about Molly, an editor who is in possession of a partial manuscript by an anonymous woman who worked in publishing and previously wrote a memoir. The other two stories are about Edna. One is the manuscript that Molly is reading – so, a bit of meta fiction there – and the other is her real story.
My issue with this novel is that I didn’t like Edna. I wasn’t invested in her relationship, I didn’t like her as a person, and once the full truth about who she was and what she had done was revealed, I actually despised her. I had an issue as well with a scene where Edna is dining in a French restaurant and when she goes to use the facilities, a waiter traps her in the cubicle and won’t release her until she kisses him. He then exposes himself to her and demands she services him. This was portrayed as something exciting, one of her many sexual escapades. It was not exciting. It’s actually sexual assault and it offended me that it was portrayed as anything other than that. But Edna seemed to be a siren. Men falling at her feet, no matter where she went. It was entirely unbelievable. By the end of the novel, I hated her.
Molly’s story was far too slim. Not nearly enough page space was devoted to her. I won’t read Caro Llewellyn again. She’s definitely not for me.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
Book Review: The Details by Ia Genberg
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024
WINNER OF THE AUGUST PRIZE 2022 (BEST FICTION)
A woman lies bedridden from a high fever. Suddenly she is struck with an urge to revisit a novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a get-well-soon message from Johanna, an ex-girlfriend who is now a famous television host. As she flips through the book, pages from the woman’s own past begin to come alive, scenes of events and people she cannot forget.
There are moments with Johanna, and Niki, the friend who disappeared years ago without a phone number or an address and with no online footprint. There is Alejandro, who gleefully campaigns for a baby even though he knows their love has no future. And Brigitte, whose elusive qualities mask a painful secret.
The Details is a novel built around four portraits; the small details that, pieced together, comprise a life. Can a loved one really disappear? Who is the real subject of the portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? Do we fully become ourselves through our connections to others? This exhilarating, provocative tale raises profound questions about the nature of relationships, and how we tell our stories. The result is an intimate and illuminating study of what it means to be human.
Published by Hachette Australia
Released August 2023
My Thoughts:My latest listen was something a little different to usual. A translation of the Swedish best-seller, The Details by Ia Genberg. This one also comes with a couple of prize tags, having been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024 and winner of the August Prize 2022 for best fiction.
So, what’s the buzz then? In a nutshell, this is a novella that is entirely character driven, specifically, by the main character, our narrator. As she lies unwell with a fever, she is compelled to find a particular book on her shelf, one gifted to her by an ex-girlfriend. From here, she reflects on four key relationships through the context of books: an ex-girlfriend, a former volatile best friend, the father of her son, and her mother.
The reflections are all about the details. Not necessarily the details of the relationship, but more the details about the person the narrator is reflecting upon. We do, of course, learn much about her, but we learn even more about these significant people, the way they shaped her at that time, and the books they shared.
I liked this one a lot. It was a soothing listen, exquisitely rendered, with beautifully phrased passages and illuminating introspections. It’s often so rewarding to stumble across a novel or novella in translation, and I genuinely did stumble across this one, randomly selecting it on Spotify as my listen home from work late last week. Nordic novels always fascinate me, the push and pull between similarities and differences with English ones. There was a really interesting addition to the end by the translator who tells of meeting the author for the first time and her thrill at translating this best-seller.
The Details won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, I daresay many readers may find it dull, but I certainly enjoyed it.
April 20, 2025
Book Review: Out of the Woods by Gretchen Shirm
In the year 2000, an Australian woman travels to the Hague to work as the secretary for an Australian judge. There, she sits through the trial of a former military man who has been charged with war crimes. As the trial proceeds, she is confronted with two conflicting impulses: being deeply affected by the testimony of witnesses, while at the same time plagued by an enduring doubt as to the defendant’s guilt.
Meanwhile, she begins an unexpected romance and friendship, and these relationships help her to understand the stories of extraordinary survival she hears about during the trial. When she is called back to Australia to reckon with her own childhood, she finds she can’t quite leave everything she’s heard behind. Out of the Woods asks what it means to bear witness to the suffering of people who have experienced real tragedy and whether it is possible, afterwards, to resume a normal life.
Released April 2025
My Thoughts:Out of the Woods is the latest release by Gretchen Shirm, an author who excels in crafting absorbing literary character driven novels. I particularly enjoyed her previous novel, The Crying Room, and equally appreciated this one.
Jess has taken a job in the Hague as a secretary to an Australian judge who is one of many presiding over the trial of a military commander at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Part of her duties is to sit in court and transcribe all testimony and evidence for the judge, who does not want to rely solely on the court provided translation. It is an emotionally charged job, and in Gretchen’s expert hands, we are right there beside Jess, as she bears witness to the accountability of a genocide.
I remember the Bosnian war, the genocide, this trial. This isn’t history for me but living memory. With the inclusion of extracts from the evidence record, there was the possibility that this novel would be too much, too horrific, too heavy. But it wasn’t. The extracts included were enough to convey, and the balance between the trial and Jess’s life allowed for the story to flow without becoming overly distressing. That’s not to say that the atrocities were watered down either. I can’t articulate this adequately, except to say that it was perfect. I felt, I contemplated, I cried, and I remembered.
This novel is primarily the story of Jess, her bearing witness to this trial, and how this subsequently shapes the narrative of the rest of her days. I love how Gretchen has this finite ability to convey the vulnerabilities of her characters with such relatable honesty.
We are currently living in a world gone mad, war being financed by wealthy countries, supported by nations who could instead sanction it. How will we bear witness in the future to these atrocities? Will the blame rest on the shoulders of one person? This is a deeply thought-provoking novel released at a time that couldn’t be more appropriate.
Thanks to Transit Lounge for the review copy.
April 18, 2025
Book Review: Time Together by Luke Horton
Trying to avoid the loneliness that’s come in the wake of his mother’s recent passing, Phil has invited a bunch of old friends to stay with him on the coast. Tomorrow, Bella and Tim will arrive with their two kids, one on the brink of puberty; and the next day, Jo and Lucas will come too, with their little one. Then there’s Annie, who will be by herself. Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe it’s just what they all need.
The story of a beach holiday told by four different people, Time Together is a novel about different kinds of love, different kinds of loneliness, and the way spending time together can bring out the best and worst in each other.
Released March 2025
My Thoughts:Time Together by Luke Horton is the perfect holiday read. A group of old friends, now in their forties, congregate in a beach house with their children and partners, along with their affection for each other, guilt at not keeping in touch more, and, as the story progresses, their underlying resentments.
Phil, the host, is grieving from the recent loss of his mother. Along with Annie, who is getting over a toxic relationship break-up, they make up the singletons of the group. Jo is married to a man 13 years younger than her and has a precocious four year old daughter, supposedly ‘gifted’, but possibly just undisciplined and indulged in the way only children with older parents can sometimes be. Bella is married to Tim and brings with her two children, a very cruisy and normal boy around seven, and a pre-pubescent horror of a girl who is 12.
As these friends catch up, the dynamics shift like sand and moods are mercurial. This is a character driven novel about friendship and families. It’s unflinchingly honest about relationships and friendships, parenting, and about the way we feel about ourselves as we age.
Bella was a difficult character. The others navigated around her moods and tantrums. Her daughter’s behaviour towards her exacerbated her own bad behaviour, like the two were caught in a toxic war that was only going to get worse as the years went on. I personally didn’t like Bella at all, I could see the many ways in which she felt entitled about her own suffering, like she was the first person to ever feel isolated and depressed as a mother. I feel as though her daughter Millie was going to grow up exactly the same. Angry about her life choices and determined to make sure everyone knew about it. I despise people like that.
‘I forgot, a bit…how intense she can be.’
‘I love her though.’
‘Of course. I seem to remember all that being more fun. Now it feels exhausting.’
‘She’s a lot.’
I really enjoyed this novel, reading the bulk of it in a day. It was an easy read to get lost in, making no demands of the reader, yet being incredibly insightful about long-term friendships and ageing. Recommended reading for those who like their fiction to be relatable.
Thanks to Scribe for the review copy.
April 14, 2025
Book Review: The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue
Europe is racing towards the future. Steam travel is the emblem of progress; industry and invention are creating ever greater wealth and ever greater deprivation; and on an autumn day in 1895 a young woman determined to make her mark on history boards the Granville to Paris Express with a bomb.
With her travel the train crew and her fellow passengers: the men who run the engine, who have built a life together away from their wives; a little boy travelling alone for the first time; a wealthy statesman and his ill daughter; an artist far from home and in search of a muse; and another young woman with a secret of a very different nature hidden beneath the layers of her dress.
The Paris Express is a thrilling ride and a literary masterpiece that captures the politics, fear, and chaos of the end of the nineteenth century.
Published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Released March 2025
My Thoughts:The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue is everything I’ve come to expect from this author. Her historical fiction is brilliance encapsulated. What she does with this one was not dissimilar to what she did with The Pull of Stars. She’s taken an event from history and crafted a narrative and characters around that event, their lives and conversations, internal musings and interactions forming a solid picture of society within that place and moment of time.
The extensive author note details just how meticulously researched this one was, not only about the event the novel builds towards, but the characters themselves being based on real people. The addition of Engine 721 – powering The Paris Express – as a character perspective was illuminating. I thoroughly enjoyed The Paris Express and recommend it widely.
‘She’s not indifferent to the prospect of annihilation. She’d spare her frail passengers terror and pain if she could. But she has no means of saving them any more than she does of saving herself.’
Thanks to Pan Macmillan Australia for the review copy.
April 11, 2025
Book Review: Days of Light by Megan Hunter
Easter Sunday, 1938. Ivy is nineteen and ready for her life to finally begin. In the idyllic Sussex countryside, her sprawling, bohemian family and their friends gather for lunch, awaiting the arrival of a longed-for guest.
It is a single, enchanted afternoon that ends in tragedy.
Days later, at a funeral, Ivy is kissed by the man she will marry and grieves with the woman who will become the love of her life. And this is only the beginning.
Chronicling six pivotal days across six decades, Days of Light moves through the Second World War and the twentieth century on a radiant journey through a life lived in pursuit of love and in search of an answer.
Released April 2025
My Thoughts:Days of Light is Megan Hunter’s first foray into historical fiction and what a treat it is. This novel is sublime. I read Megan’s previous release, The Harpy, and loved that also so I was keen to read her next release without delay. There’s a quality to her writing that sets her apart from the masses. The way this story unfolds as well, six chapters, six days, over six decades, was such a unique way to tell a story, but it worked, it worked so well.
That night in the water: wasn’t there, if she thinks carefully enough, if she pushes until it hurts, wasn’t there a moment when she could have saved him? When he called to her. She thinks of it now, she makes herself: the black water, his voice, wet, choking.
Ivy.
But she had kept her face fixed on the light, on mystery, the mystery that would pull her, like an engine, for the rest of her life. She had chosen.
Days of Light is a story of love and loss, of seeking that one thing that is meant to fulfil, of seeking answers to the mystery of a life changing loss. There is a spirituality to this story that I appreciated and a vulnerability to Ivy, the protagonist, that was deeply affecting. The sense of time and place was richly realised throughout, no mean feat as the story took place across so many decades. Throughout this story, I was reminded, over and over, that it is never too late, for anything, and that sometimes, the answer is quite simply, that there is no answer.
Beautifully written, Days of Light is a stunning novel, and it left me with a serious book hangover that was impossible to shake.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
Book Review: Signs of Damage by Diana Reid
The Kelly family’s idyllic holiday in the south of France is disturbed when Cass, a thirteen-year-old girl, goes missing. She’s discovered several hours later with no visible signs of injury. Everyone present dismisses the incident as a close brush with tragedy.
Sixteen years later, at a funeral for a member of the Kelly family, Cass collapses. The present and the past start to collide as buried secrets come to light and old doubts resurface. What really happened to Cass in the south of France? And what’s wrong with her now?
A gripping tale of unravelling memories and moral ambiguities, Signs of Damage wrestles with the difference between understanding other people and trying to explain them.
Released March 2025
My Thoughts:Signs of Damage is the latest release by the very talented Diana Reid, and once again, she has returned with something very different. No two novels are ever the same from her, each new release entirely fresh and vibrant in style, character, and theme.
In Signs of Damage, Diana Reid explores the parameters of subjectivity within the context of personal stories and the way humans invariably tend to shape a narrative to their own needs.
‘We all defer to familiar narratives: we see someone’s present suffering and immediately wonder what buried trauma is being expressed.’ – Author note.
The story unfolds over the course of a week as a dual timeline, 2008 and 2024. The perspectives alternate through both timelines between members of the Kelly family, along with Cass, Sam, and Harry, entwined as they are in each other’s lives. Much of the story is focused on Cass and the seizures she has been experiencing in the present day. Are they caused by physiological or psychological factors? Did something happen to her during that week in 2008 that was repressed and is now manifesting as seizures sixteen years on?
I liked Cass, and I particularly liked her reluctance to pin the cause of her seizures on a traumatic event. I feel as though everyone is constantly grasping at trauma to explain who they are and why they are, and sometimes, there are occasions when things just happen to people.
The story orbits around a tragedy that is revealed in the opening pages and then moves back through time to arrive back at that point. I enjoyed the narrative style and found it easy to devour this one, particularly as it was broken up into the days of the week.
Read for book club, I am keen to see what the others thought of this one. The ending was suitably anticlimactic, but I expect some readers may have wanted more of a bang to the finish. Overall, I enjoyed Signs of Damage immensely and look forward to whatever Diana Reid chooses to bring us next.
