Theresa Smith's Blog, page 7
April 4, 2025
Book Review: Mother Tongue by Naima Brown
What if being true to yourself means hurting everyone around you?
Brynn is a claustrophobic suburban mother on the brink. Eric, her husband, is transforming in dark and dangerous ways. Their daughter, Jenny, can’t fathom the storm barrelling towards her.
When Brynn awakes from a coma speaking fluent French, she seizes the opportunity to start a new life in Paris, a seismic personal transformation that leaves a slew of shattered lives in its wake.
Darkly funny and profoundly insightful, Mother Tongue challenges our expectations of motherhood and our beliefs about women’s lives. It is at once an exhilarating tale of escape and a warning about the cost of renewal.
Published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Released March 2025
My Thoughts:Mother Tongue by Naima Brown was entirely different from my expectations, and this turned out to be entirely okay because it far exceeded them in every way! I feel like this one would be 110% perfect for book clubs. There is just so much in it to unpack.
There’s the characters for a start. Brynn, our main character, is the mother whose actions are the centre of this story. Then there’s Lisa, best friend and mother figure to Brynn’s daughter, Jenny. Jenny herself, who becomes one of the character perspectives later on in her teenage years. And Eric, Jenny’s father, Brynn’s husband/ex-husband, and Lisa’s…well, that’s a whole other can of worms with how he treats Lisa and who he is to her. All of these characters bring their own particular spark to this story, but I’ll put my hand up for Lisa and Jenny being favourites.
‘Jenny had come to believe that the only way forward was to learn to inhabit the space between good and bad, right and wrong, and to make peace with contradiction. Love wasn’t what she’d thought it was. It wasn’t a solid, unchanging thing you could rely on.’
This story has certainly got its humour, a bit on the dark side and definitely laugh out loud at times, but it’s far deeper than a comedy about a woman who falls down, wakes from a coma thinking she’s French and then runs away to Paris to find herself. It’s a rather deep examination of motherhood: what it means to be a mother, from nurturing through pregnancy to giving birth, and then caring and raising to adulthood and beyond. It raises questions about what makes a mother – nature or nurture, does abandonment ever have a justification, can you undo what has already had a cataclysmic effect, and are some women just inherently cut out for motherhood while some are not. So. Many. Questions. There’s so much about female agency woven into this story as well, which is so incredibly relevant as we live in a time when many countries seem to be stripping that back and moving into the past instead of continuing to progress forward.
‘Brynn had smuggled herself out of America, she’d written herself a new story, created a new context and mythology in which to both understand and explain herself. It had never occurred to her that this was a kind of theft, an abuse of power, a wielding of privilege, something that might not have been afforded to her if she weren’t white, attractive, and – at the time – young: the trifecta of power in the Western World.’
I loved this one and highly recommend it to all readers, particularly those who like their fiction smart, controversial, and brimming with intelligent humour.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
Book Review: We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes
Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A recently broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Not to mention a once promising writing career that is now in freefall. So when her real dad – a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago – suddenly appears on her doorstep wanting to make amends, it feels like the final straw.
But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, friendship, and what it actually means to be family.
Published by Penguin Books Australia
Released February 2025
My Thoughts:My latest audio book listen was We All Live Here by the fabulous Jojo Moyes and narrated by the equally fabulous Jenna Coleman. I honestly could have listened to this book forever. It’s utterly fabulous and has all the right vibes at all the right times.
I love everything by Jojo Moyes, but I do feel like she’s akin to fine wine; just getting better with age. Or perhaps it’s because she’s writing about older women now, and that appeals to me as I age alongside her and her stories. Whatever it is, it’s brilliant stuff, and I want more of it.
We All Live Here is about family and forgiveness; the hill we want to die on as opposed to the life we’d like to lead. There’s plenty of laughs throughout, quite a few tear jerker moments, and a lovely, individualised cast of characters that are quite unforgettable.
Lila’s story about picking up the pieces and trying to just get on with it when the world has dealt you a few tough hands touched me deeply and as I mentioned above, I wasn’t quite ready to let this one go when the credits started rolling. Well done once again, Jojo Moyes. You are a queen.
March 28, 2025
Book Review: The Death of Us by Abigail Dean
It’s the story everyone wants to hear.
That spring night in South London, when Isabel and Edward’s lives were torn apart.
The night Isabel learned that the worst things wait, just outside the door.
The night Edward learned that he was powerless to stop them.
The night they never talk about.
When their attacker is caught, it’s finally time to tell the story of that night.
Not to the world. Or to the man who did it. But to each other.
This is a story of murder. This is a story of survival. But most of all, this is a story of love.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Released 2 April 2025
My Thoughts:I devoured this one over two nights. Part psychological thriller, part police procedural, part love story, this novel was brilliant. As frightening as it was devastating. And yet, there was hope fluttering throughout its pages. It tells the story of a couple who were the victims of a brutal home invasion when they were in their early thirties. Twenty years on, they are facing their attacker as he finally, in his late seventies, faces trial for his serial crimes that spanned decades and increased from prowling to rape, and then to murder. Told from both perspectives, Isabel and Edward, who were then married, but are no longer. The attack was the beginning of the death of their relationship.
‘It’s never been a question of loving you, Isabel. It’s a question of how much loving you I can take.’
Edward’s perspective is told in real time, from the trial, and his recollections of their marriage are all in hindsight, and the version of Isabel in the present day that we get to know is from his viewpoint only. Isabel’s perspective however unfolds as a story, an historical timeline of her entire relationship with Edward, prior to the attack and beyond. She is recounting this story to her attacker, as if in the form of a victim impact statement. It’s unflinchingly honest. I found this dual narration with the differing techniques an impactful way to tell a story like this one.
‘There isn’t any saving people, Edward. Not really. You can love them or protect them or please them, but the saving’s up to them.’
This story is a complex study of relationships and the far-reaching impact of crime on a person’s life. It’s done so well, and I really felt deeply affected by the story, as well as Isabel’s and Edward’s relationship. I cannot even fathom how you move on from such terror, and I suppose, in many ways, each of you in the relationship would be a constant reminder of it, of that shared experience. Above all though, it is the love story between Isabel and Edward that had the greatest impact on me from reading this novel. The story was a timely reminder to me that sometimes love is not enough. Sometimes even, love can be too much.
‘See? See how I love you. In spite of our small cruelties, and bigger mistakes. I love you. Then. And still.’
I highly recommend The Death of Us and look forward to reading more by this author.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
Book Review: Those Opulent Days by Jacquie Pham
Duy, Phong, Minh, and Edmond have been best friends since childhood. Now, as young men running their families’ formidable businesses, they make up Saigon’s most powerful group of friends in 1928 Vietnam’s elite society.
Until one of them is murdered.
In a lavish mansion on a hill in Dalat, all four men have gathered for an evening of indulgence, but one of them won’t survive the night. Toggling between this fatal night and the six days leading up to it, told from the perspectives of the four men, their mothers, their servants, and their lovers, an intricate web of terror, loyalty, and well-kept secrets begins to unravel.
As the story creeps closer to the murder, and as each character becomes a suspect, the true villain begins to emerge: colonialism, the French occupation of Vietnam, and the massive economic differences that catapult the wealthy into the stratosphere while the poor starve on the streets.
Those Opulent Days is at once both a historical novel of vivid intensity and a pitch-perfect murder mystery with a cast of characters you won’t soon forget.
Released February 2025
My Thoughts:Those Opulent Days by Jacquie Pham was quite the chameleon of a novel. I had a certain set of expectations going into this one that leaned towards quaint, but to my delight, it was a lot darker and, at times, downright frightening. The tension rippled off the pages, particularly as the novel neared its tragic end.
Four friends, as close as brothers, and yet, there are preferences and divisions, particularly as three are Vietnamese and one is a French colonial. Set in 1927, in French occupied Vietnam, this is both a mystery and historical fiction that examines political and social issues that existed within Vietnam at the time.
The elite rich were an entirely different entity. There were times when I flinched at the entitlement that they exhibited, the lack of humanity towards servants, the disdain towards anyone below their own station. The things they did without remorse. It was shocking.
This is fundamentally a story about friendship, but it’s also a story about privilege and wealth, the benefits and the costs, the fragility of everything that hinges on the gross oppression of one type of people over another. It was an excellent novel that I was gripped by and recommend widely.
Thanks to Ultimo Press for the review copy.
March 21, 2025
Book Review: The Buried Life by Andrea Goldsmith
Three people form an unlikely but spirited connection.
Adrian is a renowned scholar, an expert on death in the modern age whose life has stalled.
Kezi, a young and passionate artist, has been rejected by her family. She hurtles through her days with defiance and regret.
Laura is a successful town planner submerged in a seemingly perfect marriage.
In The Buried Life Andrea Goldsmith brilliantly dissects the conflicts and complexities of contemporary life in a story of love and friendship, faith and fundamentalism, subtly underscored by the power of poetry and music.
You can stifle the past but it will breathe again.
Released March 2025
My Thoughts:I’ve really been dithering over this review because I wanted to do this perfect novel justice. I love Andrea Goldsmith’s work, having previously read Invented Lives, a novel I was so impressed with. The Buried Life was, to me, utter perfection, the exact type of literary fiction I crave. She brings people to life, in all their imperfect glory, and Melbourne sings on the page by way of her pen.
‘And then there was love. It’s hard being loved, you have to live up to it, be worthy of it.’
This is a story of friendship, love, death, and the things we bury deep within. The three main characters and what they come to mean to each other was profound. We have Adrian, a man in his forties, living alone now after the end of a long-term relationship, a professor on the subject of death. His best friend is Kezi, a woman in her twenties who lives close by, estranged from her religious family, lonely and adrift despite having a committed girlfriend and a creative career that is taking off. When Adrian meets Laura by chance in a cheese shop, a woman in her sixties, married for over thirty years, with a successful career in town planning, their trio is formed, despite the vast age gaps between each of them and their varied backgrounds.
Laura was a deeply complex character, and I adored her (she was probably my favourite by a nudge), but her marriage with Tony pained me. What an insufferable prig he was. An absolute liar, a con man, inadequate and irrelevant. He was somewhat familiar, perhaps all women have come across a Tony here and there over the years. What Goldsmith does though, with Laura and the way she justified Tony’s behaviour towards her, the things he would say, the gratitude she seemed intent on laying at his feet, for choosing her, for improving her, even though she knew, deep inside, that he was the ruin of her. It took the accidental discovery of a lie to unravel a marriage of over thirty years. I can’t quite articulate the way Goldsmith depicted this marriage and its toxicity, but it was so finely written.
‘It pains me to say it, but you’re like one of Skinner’s rats,’ Hannah had said years ago. ‘Tony dismantles you piece by piece. And when you’re hardly recognisable, he comes to your rescue with a little reward, a little pat. Your husband knows exactly when to stop.’
And then we have Adrian, such a contrast to Tony, not a perfect man, but a different one. I love the way Goldsmith revisits things from a different perspective, and in doing so, conveys so much about a character and their dynamic with another. Take these two perspectives on Laura’s scarf:
‘Laura pulled her hat lower and twisted a hot-pink scarf around her neck. The colour was perfect against her skin.’ (Adrian’s perspective)
‘She pulled on a hat and twisted a scarf about her neck, the hot-pink one that Tony said made her look sallow; he was probably right, but it was a gift from her sister, and she liked it.’
Just a scarf, but these two sentences contain a tiny universe of information for the reader, and you instantly know what type of man Adrian is, and what type of man Tony is. This is what she does. This is how she writes. And then there is the end. Part IV, Trekking in Antartica. I have no words to describe how I felt when this title fell into place within the narrative.
Cheese, wine, and rambling conversations about art, death, music, and literature. A brilliant, stunning novel that will undoubtedly be my book of the year for 2025.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
Book Review: Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas
She first sees him in the water: a local man almost twenty years her senior. Adrift in the summer after finishing university, a young woman is on holiday with her mother in an isolated Australian coastal town. Finding herself pulled to Jude, the man in the water, she begins losing herself in the simple, seductive rhythms of his everyday life.
As their relationship deepens, life at Sailors Beach offers her the stability she has been craving as the daughter of two drifters – a loving but impulsive mother and an itinerant father. But the arrival of Maeve, a friend from Jude’s past, threatens to rock their fragile, newfound intimacy. And when she witnesses something she doesn’t fully understand, she finds herself questioning everything – about Jude, about herself, about the life she has and the one she wants.
A magnetic and unforgettable story of desire and its complexities, and a powerful reckoning with memory, loss and longing, Madelaine Lucas’s debut novel reveals with stunning, sensual immediacy the way the past can hold us in its thrall, shaping who we are and what we love.
Released April 2023
My Thoughts:Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas has sat on my tbr shelf since its release in 2023. This week, I finally cracked it, and I wish so much I’d read it earlier. I did a hybrid read where I listened to it driving to and from work and then read the paperback for all the time in between.
It’s a rather simple story of a woman reflecting back on an intense, but brief relationship from when she was 24 with a man who was 42, after seeing a photograph of him in the present day with a little girl who is his daughter. The relationship began, burned bright for a time, and then ended abruptly. There is nothing new there, in terms of the story.
However, it’s all the stitches woven into the seams of the relationship that give this simple plot its shimmer. And the writing, which is pared back with its short chapters and honest introspection. Overall, hauntingly beautiful prose that had me re-listening at times, reading pages more than once. It’s an absolutely impressive debut, and the audio has the added bonus of being narrated by the author. No one knows their work as well as the one who wrote it, so that’s always a treat.
‘It is easy, I have learned, to mistake solitude for softness, for depth.’
I have no idea if Madelaine Lucas has written anything else since this one; I hope so. She’s an absolute powerhouse of a writer.
Belated thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
March 18, 2025
Book Review: Shift by Irma Gold
In the year of the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter — which outlined the principles of democracy and freedom in South Africa — comes a novel set in the township where it was signed. Shift asks us to examine both the world around us… and ourselves.
Arlie is a moderately successful thirty-something photographer who can’t seem to get his shit together. He can’t hold onto a girlfriend, or much else, and his relationship with his parents is complicated. His agoraphobic mother, Dellie, has long drawn a silence over her South African upbringing. The more she refuses to illuminate, the more Arlie wants to know.
After another break-up, Arlie needs to get away, and there’s only one place he’s drawn to. In Kliptown, he meets choirmaster Rufaro, singer Glory and her younger brother Samson. Amidst the poverty, violence and beauty of this neglected South African township, Arlie begins exploring ideas for an exhibition, and courting the possibility of happiness. But then his father unexpectedly turns up, and a catastrophic event changes everything.
Gutsy and gripping, tender and deeply compassionate, Shift is a compulsively readable story about the messy process of art-making, and the mess of love and family. It is an unflinching, insightful and immersive novel that takes the reader inside the inner life of one township, beyond the hyperbole of newspaper headlines, to offer bold, big-hearted hope.
Published by MidnightSun Publishing
Released March 2025
My Thoughts:Shift by Irma Gold is recommended reading for those of you who are looking for smart, deeply probing fiction that examines political, economic, and social issues in places that are screaming into the void. Set in Kliptown, a suburb of Soweto in South Africa, renowned for its significance as the place where the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955. A quick google of Kliptown today is confronting and an example of policy NOT in action. The poverty and standard of living are apalling.
In Shift, Irma takes us to Kliptown in the shoes worn by Arlie, an idealistic and somewhat naive photograher searching for his next exhibition along with some meaning within his own life. He finds both in Kliptown but not entirely as he envisages.
Irma brings this area to life, but not as ‘poverty porn’, which is so often encountered in commercial fiction, but as the area most likely is – filled with vibrant people living their lives as best they can with nothing, no progress, no improvement, no infrastructure, facilities, housing, or safety. The setting is created with such visceral intensity, and Arlie’s experiences there were fascinating to read about. I felt quite a part of it all.
This is a complex story with many themes. The story is a personal journey for Arlie, who struggles with his father and their relationship, in which he perceives himself as the disappointment of the family. It is also of course a text that shines a light on the situation in modern-day Kliptown and greater South Africa, touching on the intergenerational weight of shame that may be present within white families that have left South Africa. It’s an illuminating story that was very thought-provoking, a great one for book clubs.
Thanks to Irma Gold and the publisher MidnightSun for the review copy!
March 17, 2025
Book Review: Why Do Horses Run? by Cameron Stewart
WINNER OF THE 2025 MUD LITERARY PRIZE
Missing in every sense of the word, a man walks into the landscape and doesn’t stop. In all weather and across all kinds of terrain, Ingvar walks until he can go no further, then gets up and does it again the following day, week after week, month after month. For three years he doesn’t know why he keeps going, or whether he is walking towards something or away from it.
Until he comes to a remote tropical valley harbouring secrets and misfits. There a recently widowed woman, Hilda, allows Ingvar to live in a shed on her property. He hasn’t spoken for three years and Hilda chats frequently with her dead husband, but somehow they tolerate each other as they both struggle with the haunting impact of their pasts and grief that won’t let them go.
Steeped in mystery and foreboding, Why Do Horses Run? asks crucial questions about love and loss, and what might make a person never want to be found. Simple, profound, transformative and deeply moving, this indelible debut explores the propensity of the natural world to both heal and harm, as well as the ineradicable power of kindness and community.
Released April 2024
My Thoughts:Why Do Horses Run? by Cameron Stewart was taking me to and from work and following me around the house for the last week and a half. The narration is excellent, and I don’t rate that lightly because this is an emotionally fraught read, and it takes skill to convey that when reading aloud.
This is a story about grief and loss, coming back from the brink, the randomness of life and death, and the kindness of strangers. It’s a deep story, right from the outset, steeped as it is in trauma and grief. The story itself unfolds in pieces, revealing itself layer by layer with a combination of literary devices – diary entries, a ghostly presence, and the present day perspective.
This is not the sort of novel you say you enjoyed. It’s more one that you appreciate and ponder over. At times, it was sorrowful. At other times, it made me angry. Many times, I laughed. In the end, I was left feeling a sense of awe at Cameron’s vision. The irony of reading a novel about the randomness of death at the same time as unexpectedly losing my beautiful beloved old dog is not lost on me.
March 8, 2025
Goodbye Sweet Zeusy Boy
For those of you who have followed this blog for a long time, you would be familiar with my beautiful little Husky named Zeus, whose adventures and antics were a regular feature in my newsletter posts that previous to this year were a weekly/monthly contribution.
Sadly, Zeus passed away yesterday, one week on from his 12th birthday. While still young and mischievous in spirit, his body was weary with age and gave up on him. He was my constant companion and brought so much joy to our family. We are bereft. The thing with having an old dog is that even though you know that age is wearing them down and their days are now limited, you still aren’t really ready to face their death.
He was a one in a million type of dog, endlessly happy, a loyal shadow to his humans, a friend to all who visited. I will miss him forever.
Zeus 2.3.13 – 8.3.25
Book Review: Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
It’s the day before her daughter’s wedding and things are not going well for Gail Baines. First thing, she loses her job – or quits, depending who you ask. Then her ex-husband Max turns up at her door expecting to stay for the festivities. He doesn’t even have a suit. Instead, he’s brought memories, a shared sense of humour – and a cat looking for a new home.
Just as Gail is wondering what’s next, their daughter Debbie discovers her groom has been keeping a secret…
As the big day dawns, the exes just can’t agree on what’s best for Debbie. Gail is seriously worried, while Max seems more concerned with whether to opt for the salmon or prime rib at the reception, if they make it that far.
The day after the wedding, Gail and Max prepare to go their separate ways again. But all the questions about the future of the happy couple have stirred up the past for Gail. Because ‘happy’ takes many forms, and sometimes the younger generation has much to teach the older about secrets, acceptance and taking the rough with the smooth.
Published by Penguin Books Australia
Released February 2025
My Thoughts:New fiction from Anne Tyler is always a most welcome addition to my reading line up. Three Days in June is a novella, its story told over the three days of a wedding weekend. Gail’s daughter is getting married, and her ex-husband is staying with her for the three days, along with a homeless cat he has brought along with him.
This novella is everything Anne Tyler does best. Warm, funny, light, and then unexpectedly deep. Pure comfort for the soul.
Despite her daughter being an adult and not having lived at home for many years, Gail feels a weight at letting her daughter go, the wedding a final snip at an imagined tether. As she processes this, being in such close quarters with her ex-husband leads her to ruminate on her marriage and subsequent divorce, and the role she played in its demise. An untimely crisis on the employment front leads to further introspection and contemplation. A sort of where to from here. Is one ever too old to start again?
I haven’t met an Anne Tyler yet that I haven’t loved, and this one is no exception. Three Days in June was a really gorgeous novella that was also entertaining to listen to.
