Theresa Smith's Blog, page 77

Book Review: Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

Redhead by the Side of the Road…
About the Book:

From the bestselling author of A Spool of Blue Thread: an offbeat love story about mis-steps, second chances and the elusive art of human connection.

Micah Mortimer isn’t the most polished person you’ll ever meet. His numerous sisters and in-laws regard him oddly but very fondly, but he has his ways and means of navigating the world. He measures out his days running errands for work – his TECH HERMIT sign cheerily displayed on the roof of his car – maintaining an impeccable cleaning regime and going for runs (7:15, every morning). He is content with the steady balance of his life.

But then the order of things starts to tilt. His woman friend Cassia (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a ‘girlfriend’) tells him she’s facing eviction because of a cat. And when a teenager shows up at Micah’s door claiming to be his son, Micah is confronted with another surprise he seems poorly equipped to handle.

Redhead by the Side of the Road is an intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who sometimes finds those around him just out of reach – and a love story about the differences that make us all unique.

My Thoughts:

I adored this novel. The hours I spent reading it were a pure bliss of escape from the lounge room I have been in for what now seems like forever. And you really do escape: it’s as though Anne Tyler picks you up and pulls you into the story, casting you into an observational role, her writing is just that immersive. Micah has quite a large family and there was a section where he goes to lunch at his sister’s, the whole extended family is there, probably upward of twenty people if you consider the children. There are several conversations going on and so many sisters and husbands and nieces and nephews with children of their own, and yet, I didn’t once experience even a flicker of confusion as to what was going on and who was doing the talking at any given time. I love fiction that can pull you in like that, create a sense of rowdiness that appears chaotic yet is tightly controlled by the skill of the author. Anne Tyler is a master at this.

Now, Micah was such an endearing character. Driven so much by routine, even his spontaneity was somewhat planned. I will confess, just quietly, that I do share Micah’s views on housekeeping:

‘It was Micah’s personal theory that if you actually noticed the difference you made when you cleaned – the coffee table suddenly shiny, the rug suddenly lint-free – it meant you had waited too long to do it.’

I drive myself spare sometimes on account of this but it’s somewhat ingrained within me and difficult to fight. This whole novel is just brimming with witty and honest observations, this is the sort of humour that I can’t get enough of. It’s also the type of humour that is difficult for an author to nail without appearing as though they’re trying too hard, but not so for Anne Tyler. She hits the right note each and every time. Micah was a considerate and caring man, as demonstrated with his neighbours and family, but he sometimes missed the beat with his more personal relationships, much to his own ire. I loved the way he interacted with his sisters, all older than him. They mothered him but were also very grounding. The entire family dynamics within this story were fantastic, actually.

The cover for this novel (the one pictured here) puts me in mind of the early readers we used to get in primary school and even the title gave me a feeling of nostalgia for the same reason. The title itself is quite interesting and it was amusing to discover ‘who’ the redhead by the side of the road was. It’s not a big secret, so I don’t feel like I’m spoiling that for you by exploring it here. Micah runs each day but he does so without wearing his glasses, which are for distance. So things coming up ahead as he’s running are often blurry. Hence, each and every day, he mistakes a faded red fire hydrant for a redhead by the side of the road. The symbolism of this exists not within the fire hydrant itself, but within the way Micah consistently mistakes it for a redhead by the side of the road every single day.

‘He momentarily mistook the hydrant for a redhead and gave his usual shake of the shoulders at how repetitious this thought was, how repetitious all his thoughts were, how they ran in a deep rut and how his entire life ran in a rut, really.’

And herein lies the beauty of this novel, the depth of meaning that runs below the surface of what might appear initially as a very simple and somewhat funny story. It’s so much more than that. It’s a story about human interaction, about acceptance and adjustment, about self-realisation in the face of not necessarily losing everything, but rather, in gaining nothing by maintaining your current routines and outlook. I have to say, this little novel is a slice of literary perfection.

‘I’m a roomful of broken hearts.’

About the Author:

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her bestselling novels include Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Ladder of Years, Back When We Were Grownups, A Patchwork Planet, The Amateur Marriage, Digging to America, A Spool of Blue Thread, Vinegar Girl and Clock Dance. In 1989 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons; in 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as ‘the greatest novelist writing in English’; in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence; and in 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread was a Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize.

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Redhead by the Side of the Road

Published by Penguin Random House UK – Chatto & Windus

Released 9th April 2020

Vale Julian Leatherdale

The news that Julian Leatherdale has passed away has brought great sadness to the Australian historical fiction community. He was was well liked, generous with his time and expertise, and he wrote marvellous historical fiction. He will be missed and I thought I’d share this lovely tribute written by his publisher, in memory of a talented man taken far too soon.

Published on Allen & Unwin’s blog, Things Made From Letters and written by publisher Annette Barlow.

It is with great sadness that I write this tribute to a wonderful man and one of our most loved authors, Julian Leatherdale. Julian died early in the morning of Wednesday, 22 April, with his beloved family around him after an illness of less than twelve months.

Allen & Unwin is fortunate to have been Julian’s home for his three historical novels for adults and, as his publisher at A&U, I was very much looking forward to a long association with Julian and his writing. His research is impeccable and his imagination creative and clever. He was a complete delight to work with in all aspects of publishing, and was warm and witty company at any time.

Julian was truly a man of many talents. He loved theatre and in his early years wrote lyrics for four comedy cabarets and a musical. In 2017, he wrote the short play A Life in Ten Meals for the theatre project Breaking Bread, and in 2018 the black comedy The Man Who Became Santa.

Julian discovered a passion for popular history as a staff writer, researcher and photo editor for Time-Life’s Australians At War series. He later researched and co-wrote two Film Australia-ABC documentaries, Return to Sandakan and The Forgotten Force, and was an image researcher at the State Library of New South Wales.

This love of history and the amazing stories his research uncovered led Julian to write his first bestselling novel, Palace of Tears, which was published by Allen & Unwin in 2015 and HarperCollins Germany in 2016. He quickly became an authority on the extraordinary history of the opulent Blue Mountains hotel, the Hydro Majestic on which the hotel in his novel was based, and his essay on the Hydro Majestic and Mark Foy was published on the Dictionary of Sydney website for the 2015 Blue Mountains Icons project.

Julian’s second novel, The Opal Dragonfly, was published in 2018 with a thoughtful and fascinating mix of Sydney’s colonial history and fiction. The Historical Novel Society’s perceptive review said: ‘…an ambitious undertaking that presents all of the class bigotry and narrow-mindedness of the era. Its characters and awkward coming-of-age scenes are reminiscent of Austen. That, combined with Dickensian social realism, has resulted in Leatherdale creating a memorable, epic work that is destined to become an Australian literary classic.’

Death in the Ladies’ Goddess Club is Julian’s third adult novel set within the dark underbelly of 1930s Kings Cross and its glamorous fringe. This novel was recently published in March 2020 and as ill as Julian was, he was also as enthusiastic, engaged, courteous and erudite as ever in the publicity he managed to complete for this book. A&U’s Publicity Director, Peri Wilson, says: ‘Working alongside Julian was an utter delight. What a charming, interesting, kind man he was – and a brilliant writer to boot. I will always remember him with great fondness.’

A long-held goal of Julian’s was to publish a novel for younger readers and his debut YA fantasy adventure novel, The Phantasmic Detective Agency, is published by Eagle Books.

We will miss Julian so much and send our sincere condolences to his wife, his children, family and friends.

Annette Barlow, Publisher

The Week That Was…

What a week! First week of online learning combined with working from home against a background of online platforms crashing. And then on Wednesday, our ducted aircon system failed. We’re currently enjoying autumn days of 37 degrees. Apparently, the part that is required to get the aircon up and running again has gone AWOL. Let’s just move on now, shall we?

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Joke of the week:

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What I’ve been watching:

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A blend of fact and fiction and wholly enjoyable. Recommended viewing.

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Book of the week:

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Recipe of the week:

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Author Talks: Sonya Bates on the transition from Children’s Fiction to Crime Thriller

On first glance, children’s fiction doesn’t seem to have much in common with crime thrillers – in this case, a murder mystery with a dual timeline. And yet, that is the leap in genre that I made when I set out to write Inheritance of Secrets.

I’d been writing children’s fiction for a few years when I first got the idea for Inheritance of Secrets. I’d had some success with my children’s writing and had five published chapter books. I’d written a middle-grade fantasy novel and a humorous adventure set in the future, both of which still sit in the bottom drawer. I had no intention of writing adult fiction – or crime. But the muse doesn’t always listen to the mind (does it ever?) and the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. That idea was the character of Karl – a fictional character inspired by my dad. All I knew about Karl was that he was a young German soldier fighting for his country in WWII, an ordinary man caught up in a terrible period of history, who later moved to Australia.

I tried to ignore him. I wrote the fourth in a series of chapter books, and then at my publisher’s suggestion, tried my hand at writing high interest/low reading level novels for young adults. Short novels for teens who were reluctant readers. I learned that every word had to count. I had to keep the readers interested, turning pages, wanting to read on. And yet, keep it simple. Use kid-speak in dialogue, make it sound authentic, have a believable plot. Make the characters relatable and not perfect. No one likes perfect. And I must put those characters in an interesting setting that kids could visualise, but not be bored by over-description.

Years passed, but Karl didn’t go away, despite my attempts to ignore him. In fact, he insisted he wanted his story told. I just didn’t know what that story was. I started researching. What was it like in Germany in the 1930’s when he was a kid? What kind of a childhood did he have? What would it be like growing up with the knowledge that at 18 you would be going to war? And afterwards. What would he have experienced coming to Australia only a few short years after the war ended? How would he be received? Those questions led to research and research led to more questions, but still, I couldn’t start writing. It was too big. Too daunting. I didn’t know where – or how – to start.

What I wanted to write – what my mind was telling me to write – was a historical novel. An immigration story, a family saga. But that wasn’t Karl’s story. Not the one that needed to be told. Not the one that I could tell. And then I saw the opening scene of the novel. A young woman walking down the corridor of the morgue on the way to identify the bodies of her grandparents. And I knew that the grandfather was Karl. And that he’d been murdered, that secrets from his past had come back to haunt him. This then, was his story. His and his granddaughter Juliet’s.

I started writing. The novel opened straight into the action, it was fast-paced, with a hook at the end of each chapter to keep readers turning pages and wanting to read on. Each character had their own voice, an authentic voice for their time period, their age and personality. They were flawed, open to their vulnerabilities, relatable. And placed in an interesting setting, an interesting time period, something the reader could visualise.

Now this is starting to sound familiar. Fast-paced, page-turner, authentic and believable. Unbeknownst to me, those skills that I had developed writing children’s fiction were the very ones I needed to write Inheritance of Secrets. Yes, it was more complex, it had multiple subplots and a dual timeline. It was longer. Ninety thousand words longer than my longest published children’s novel. And I’d never written historical fiction before. That was the biggest hurdle. But writing is writing. Every word needed to count. Every character needed to be authentic. It really wasn’t that different after all.

Inheritance of Secrets is not the historical saga I had initially intended to write. It is the story that I needed to write, the only story I could write. And I am certain I couldn’t have written it without my apprenticeship in children’s writing. Karl’s migration story is there, as I always knew it would be, underpinning a contemporary mystery, Juliet’s story of loss, love, loyalty and a search for the truth.

Inheritance of Secrets

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A brutal murder. A wartime promise. A quest for the truth.

No matter how far you run, the past will always find you.

Juliet’s elderly grandparents are killed in their Adelaide home. Who would commit such a heinous crime – and why? The only clue is her grandfather Karl’s missing signet ring.

When Juliet’s estranged sister, Lily, returns in fear for her life, Juliet suspects something far more sinister than a simple break-in gone wrong. Before Juliet can get any answers, Lily vanishes once more.

Juliet only knew Karl Weiss as a loving grandfather, a German soldier who emigrated to Australia to build a new life. What was he hiding that could have led to his murder? While attempting to find out, Juliet uncovers some disturbing secrets from WWII that will put both her and her sister’s lives in danger …

Gripping. Tense. Mysterious. Inheritance of Secrets links the crimes of the present to the secrets of the past and asks how far would you go to keep a promise?

Published by HarperCollins – AU

Released 20th April 2020

About the Author:

Sonya Bates is a Canadian writer who has made South Australia her home since 1997. She studied linguistics at the University of Victoria before obtaining a Masters degree in speech-language pathology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. Having worked with children with communication difficulties for over twenty-five years, she now enjoys sharing her knowledge with speech pathology students as a part-time clinical educator. When her two daughters were young, she started writing for children and has published several children’s books. Inheritance of Secrets is her debut adult novel, which was shortlisted as an unpublished manuscript in the inaugural Banjo Prize in 2018.

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Book Review: The Secrets of Strangers by Charity Norman

The Secrets of Strangers…
About the Book:

A gunshot rings out in a London cafe and the lives of five strangers will never be the same again. The only thing that’s certain is that nothing is as it seems.

Five strangers, one cafe – and the day that everything changed.

A regular weekday morning veers drastically off-course for a group of strangers whose paths cross in a London cafe – their lives never to be the same again when an apparently crazed gunman holds them hostage. But there is more to the situation than first meets the eye and as the captives grapple with their own inner demons, the line between right and wrong starts to blur. Will the secrets they keep stop them from escaping with their lives?

My Thoughts:

‘The early moments of a siege are the most dangerous. Attackers panic. The lizard brain takes over: the primeval fight-or-flight response, smothering rational thought. They can’t run, so they lash out. They do appalling things: things that their friends and family can’t believe of them; things they can’t believe of themselves when they look back later.’

I liked this book far more than I anticipated. I expected a crime story, a cafe under siege, tense right the way through, more focus on the events than the characters. It was tense alright, but it dug down deep into the lives of the characters, steering me towards a feeling of empathy with a gunman – something I never thought I’d ever feel. But as the story unfolds, Sam (aka gunman) becomes less of a crazed man with a gun and more of a fellow human being who has been wronged, over and over, a victim of a master manipulator and an unfortunate pawn in a young woman’s naivety. Grief over first losing his farm, then his daughter, and finally his mother; rage at his step-father for years of personal injustice and witnessing the terrible man gas-light his mother until she was all but destroyed; weighed down with fatigue and over stimulated by days of chewing Ritalin; by the end, I could see so clearly the how and why of Sam being where he was at that moment in time with a gun in his hands. And, so could his hostages. And even more telling, so could his hostage negotiator, a character, I’d like to point out as being remarkable. I very much enjoyed the inclusion of that perspective to the story.

‘He likes all three of these people. In fact, he’s wondering whether he’s got some kind of Stockholm syndrome but in reverse. It’s him aligning with them, not the other way around.’

Less terrifying siege and more breakfast club (but with a gun and barred doors), over the course of a very long day, Sam and his hostages get to know each other. It surprises them all, this sharing of stories, to the point where they are genuinely trying to get the best outcome for Sam. This is a novel that really humanises suffering, which shows with so much clarity that everyone has a breaking point, and that sometimes good people do bad things. I was in tears by the end. The author reels you in, bit by bit, until you are so immersed it’s as though you are a hostage in the cafe as well. This is a top read, utterly gripping and beautifully written. I’ll certainly be reading more from Charity Norman, you can count on it.

‘Hours later, one of the owls hooted in the dark mass of the spinney. He opened his eyes and saw that the sky had cleared, and so had his mind. Stars blazed from one horizon to another. The clock was striking again. One, two, three strikes and you’re out.’

Thanks is extended to Allen & Unwin for providing me with a review copy of The Secrets of Strangers.

About the Author:

Charity Norman was born in Uganda and brought up in successive draughty vicarages in Yorkshire and Birmingham. After several years’ travel she became a barrister, specialising in crime and family law in the northeast of England. Also a mediator and telephone crisis line listener, she’s passionate about the power of communication to slice through the knots. In 2002, realising that her three children had barely met her, she took a break from the law and moved with her family to New Zealand. Her first novel, Freeing Grace, was published in 2010. Second Chances (After the Fall) was a Richard and Judy Book Club choice and World Book Night title. See You in September, her last book, was shortlisted for Best Crime Novel in the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards for Crime Fiction. The Secrets of Strangers is her sixth book.

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The Secrets of Strangers

Published by Allen & Unwin

Released 3rd March 2020

Book Review: The Age of Witches by Louisa Morgan

The Age of Witches…
About the Book:

A MAGICAL TALE OF FAMILY, AMBITION AND LOVE, SET IN GILDED AGE NEW YORK AND LONDON

In 1692, Bridget Bishop was hanged as a witch. Two hundred years later, her legacy lives on in the scions of two very different lines: one dedicated to using their powers to heal and help women in need; the other, determined to grasp power for themselves.

This clash will play out in the fate of Annis, a young woman in Gilded Age New York who finds herself a pawn in the family struggle for supremacy. She’ll need to claim her own power to save herself – and resist succumbing to the darkness that threatens to overcome them all.

My Thoughts:

This was such an enjoyable novel. It had all of my favourite ingredients: historical fiction set in the Victorian era, witchcraft, botany/herbology, the bond that can exist between humans and horses, strong female characters, issues of female agency, and a love story without the romance. Absolutely ideal! I was initially drawn to this novel by the cover (isn’t it divine?) but I am pleased to say that the story itself more than lives up to its adornment.

‘Witch should be a beautiful word, signifying wisdom and knowledge and discipline, but it isn’t used that way. It’s been made an insult, implying evil, causing fear. The word has been perverted.’

There are many layers to this story, making it incredibly engrossing and perfect if you’re looking for a novel to truly get lost in. Like I mentioned above, it’s set during the Victorian era, but split between England and New York’s Gilded Age. The story begins as a battle between two witches who are cousins but practice very different types of magic. One is determined to secure a marriage for her step-daughter and has no adverse feelings about using the dark arts to do so, even if it is against her step-daughter’s will. The other is determined to stop her, to protect her niece and the unsuspecting young man who has become an unfortunate pawn in this battle. When the battle does play out to a rather stunning conclusion, it occurs earlier in the novel than I expected but leads the story into a whole new, and quite engrossing, territory. There is really so much more to this story than what is conveyed via the blurb.

‘Annis, hairbrush in her hand, knelt before a lively fire in the small parlor to dry her hair. James found her there and held out his hand for the brush. “Allow me,” he said. Startled, Annis gave him the hairbrush and bent her head. With patient hands he untangled the strands of damp hair and began to brush. It was an oddly intimate experience, the heat of the fire against her scalp, the firm, slow strokes of the hairbrush, the occasional grazing of her cheek by James’s long fingers. Annis’s breathing quickened, and her heart beat a little faster at his nearness.’

Issues of female agency are examined under several different lights: organised marriage against one’s will, servitude, the exercising of a husband’s ‘right’ to institutionalise his wife; along with many and varied instances of morality and the balance of power within relationships, both conjugal and familial. This is a novel where the author has taken a theme and then really dug in deep into her era and the societal issues that were present within it. There is an overall supernatural story arc, but it acts as the glue to bind everything else together quite brilliantly. The Age of Witches is one novel that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend.

Thanks is extended to Hachette UK for providing me with a NetGalley review copy of The Age of Witches.

About the Author:

Louisa Morgan is a pseudonym for award-winning author Louise Marley. Louise lives in the Pacific Northwest where she and her Border Terrier, Oscar, ramble the beaches and paths of Washington State.

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The Age of Witches

Published by Orbit

Released 21st April 2020

Book Review: The Paris Secret by Natasha Lester

The Paris Secret…
About the Book:

A wardrobe of Dior gowns, a secret kept for sixty-five years, and the three women bound forever by war… from the New York Times bestselling author of THE FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHER.

England, 1939: Talented pilot Skye Penrose joins the British war effort where she encounters her estranged sister, Liberty, and childhood soulmate Nicholas Crawford, now engaged to enigmatic Frenchwoman Margaux Jourdan.

Paris, 1947: Designer Christian Dior unveils his extravagant first collection to a world weary of war and grief. He names his debut fragrance, Miss Dior, in tribute to his sister, Catherine, who worked for the French Resistance.

Present day: Australian fashion conservator Kat Jourdan discovers a secret wardrobe filled with priceless Dior gowns in her grandmother’s vacant cottage. As she delves into the mystery, Kat begins to doubt everything she thought she knew about her beloved grandmother.

An unspeakable betrayal will entwine all of their fates.

THE PARIS SECRET is an unforgettable story about the lengths people go to protect one another, and a love that, despite everything, lasts a lifetime.

My Thoughts:

There is a quote in this novel that had me chuckling as soon as I read it and I want to share it up front as it really does set the stage for what I want to say about Natasha Lester after having read her latest release, The Paris Secret.

‘He took historical events people thought they knew about and retold them from the perspective of someone unexpected or overlooked.’

One of the characters in this book is an author and this is a description of his writing. But honestly, this is exactly what Natasha does! In her case, she’s been writing about WWII, and in particular with her last two novels, The French Photographer and The Paris Secret, her unexpected and overlooked perspectives are those of women and the extraordinary ways in which they contributed to the fight to save humanity. The Paris Secret takes us into the world of female pilots in England during WWII, and goodness, what a world it was. The astonishing bravery of these women, the hideous manner in which they were used and discriminated against; it truly beggars’ belief.

‘She supposed they couldn’t have known it would be the worst winter England had seen for decades. But the RAF did coordinate the ferrying movements and so could dictate what the women flew and where. And they flew those Tiger Moths right the way through the record-breaking winter to Scotland. Two thousand planes. Two thousand arctic journeys in all.’

Natasha Lester’s work has evolved into a more feminist outlook with her last two novels. Her research is deeply focused, sadly, I think it has to be in order to uncover the atrocious manner in which women were so casually treated across the board in the many and varied roles they fulfilled throughout WWII – hidden histories, so to speak, and no doubt difficult to recover facts on. Even so, there is a meticulous attention to detail that gives her work credibility. There is, quite literally, no stone left unturned. A read through the author note at the end of this novel proves the lengths of her commitment to portraying her story with accuracy. On account of the many cases of injustice and misogyny she has no doubt uncovered over the course of her research across all of her novels set within this era, Natasha’s focus seems to have narrowed, and is consequently sharpened onto portraying these injustices, minus the sugar coating. She has a distinct talent when it comes to characterisation, crafting strong women who are not brash and crass, but rather strong-willed, intelligent, fiercely brave and loyal, while still retaining their femininity. In short, she doesn’t see the need for having her women constantly swear out of context or act in distasteful ways, mimicking the violence of men and exacerbating casual sexism, as is sadly, a common trend in novels that feature ‘strong’ women, particularly in military settings. There is a grace to Natasha’s characters that instantly ignites empathy.

‘Every one of her worst experiences at the ATA scudded across her vision: the test flight she’d had to undergo to prove she could fly, despite her logbooks; the medical examiner asking her to remove her clothes; the freezing flights to Scotland in open cockpit planes; the ten circuits she’d had to do in her Halifax just because she was a woman.’

There are so many layers to this novel, the story laced as tightly as a web, spun out in the telling over three eras. Whilst most of the story unfolds during the war, there are several vignettes set just after the war and these were particularly sad, weighted with all of the horrors that had not long passed, but were not yet tempered with the passage of time. I did very much enjoy the present-day sections, both the story and the characterisation. This is a somewhat ambitious novel, huge in scope, and many layered in its story, but it works. Natasha Lester has, in my opinion, demonstrated once again, that she can not only build incredible worlds and people them with a magnificent cast, but she has the ability to execute it all with well-timed precision and historical authenticity. Throughout the entire novel, she consistently achieves the right balance of heartache and hope, whilst still retaining a real-world impression. As we approach the ending, the story takes a very grim and distressing turn, and while much is conveyed about the characters situation, it is never done in a gratuitous manner. Sensitivity to what hundreds of thousands of women went through remained paramount throughout this entire part of the story.

‘Le dernier convoi that train was later called: the last train out of Paris. It arrived at Ravensbruck concentration camp on the twenty-first of August 1944. Paris fell to the Allies just four days later.’

So, what about the fashion? Where does that fit in? The fashion angle, particularly the sixty-five gowns, offers an ode to friendship and survival. I really liked what Natasha did here, especially the symbolism of those two brilliant blue dresses, it was very moving. Kat’s career was fascinating, the science of it and the way in which history can be conveyed through the fashions of the time – and not just in terms of how people looked, but also about society and its values. I’ve always had a keen interest in this area and this novel allowed some indulgence in that without minimising the gravity of everything else that was going on.

‘The dresses in her grandmother’s mysterious cottage were not just a random selection: there was one gown for every year from 1947, when the House of Dior opened, through to the present. Sixty-five gowns in all, chosen carefully to represent the best and most timeless pieces.’

I don’t cry much over books anymore. A tear here and there maybe, sometimes a welling in my throat that forces me to hold the tears back until it passes. Honestly, when you have to wear glasses to see, crying becomes a pain. I can count on one hand the books I’ve properly cried in and still have fingers to spare. But this one, I had to stop reading because I couldn’t see for the tears and the wet glasses and I couldn’t breathe for the blocked nose. It made me ugly cry and that is a very rare thing! This book, it’s exceptional. I can’t even possibly articulate the exquisite mix of beauty and sorrow that is evident throughout. I’m not sure how Natasha Lester plans to top this one, but as always, I will be at the head of the line when the time comes to find out.

Thanks is extended to Hachette Australia for providing me with a review copy of The Paris Secret.

Read more about The Paris Secret over at Author Talks with Natasha Lester.

About the Author:

Natasha Lester worked as a marketing executive before returning to university to study creative writing. She completed a Master of Creative Arts as well as her first novel, What Is Left Over, After, which won the T.A.G. Hungerford Award for Fiction. Her second novel, If I Should Lose You, was published in 2012, followed by A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald in 2016, Her Mother’s Secret in 2017 and the Top 10 Australian and international bestsellers The Paris Seamstress in 2018 and The French Photographer in 2019. The Age described Natasha as ‘a remarkable Australian talent’ and her work has been published in numerous anthologies and journals.

In her spare time Natasha loves to teach writing, is a sought after public speaker and can often be found playing dress-ups with her three children. She lives in Perth. For all the latest news from Natasha, visit http://www.natashalester.com.au, follow her on Twitter @Natasha_Lester, or Instagram (natashalesterauthor), or join the readers who have become Natasha’s friend on Facebook.

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The Paris Secret

Published by Hachette Australia

Released 31st March 2020

Book Review: Caked in Dust by Mel A Rowe

Caked in Dust…
About the Book:

A shy kitchenhand. A sultry ex-fireman. And a town’s tradition is about to be tested…

There’ll be no escaping her reputation now, not when Lucy’s hopes of running her own kitchen are derailed by the new guy, Jax. In minutes, he’s managed to stir up the locals and condemn an institution—leaving Lucy jobless!

Bound by a promise to bury his past, Jax’s outback survival is off to an uneasy start as he tries to renovate a deserted farmhouse the wildlife has claimed as their own. In need of help, Jax volunteers to assist Lucy as she tries to flip her fried reputation via a crazy-train of trials. In return, she’ll guide him as they explore the boundaries of family, friendship, and his land.

A land that hides a secret Lucy is entrusted to keep.

A secret that could crumble her dreams into ash and risk losing the man she loves…

From the bestselling author of the much-adored Elsie Creek Series, the romantic adventure continues in this fun, tasty test of trust, love, and dusty outback traditions, revealing that the perfect recipe for happiness in the home is much bigger than a house—it’s a town.

My Thoughts:

Rural romance fiction is far from my usual reading preferences and consequently, when I do read a book within this genre, reviewing it proves difficult for me. I have to make a conscious effort not to judge the book by its genre and the many reasons why I personally don’t like it and instead just narrow my gaze onto the book at hand. Not easy though, as rural romance fiction is very formulaic and that is one of things I enjoy the least. You’re probably wondering why I even read this if I dislike the genre so much. It’s because I’m still not all that good at saying no. Getting better at it every day, but occasionally I am caught out by a review request in a moment of weakness.

I can see though how this story will have great appeal to those who do love the genre. It’s very well written, moves along at a swift pace and has all of the back and forth sparkling chemistry so required for an engaging romance story. The rural aspect is also well set up in terms of a vibrant community of all sorts living their best lives together in one of the remotest parts of Australia.

The biggest appeal of this novel for me personally was the history of the area that was woven into the story. With a newcomer to town, it was easy for the author to inject this into the story in a seamless way. Northern Australia is quite a fascinating place and this is conveyed strongly by this author, who writes with passion and enthusiasm about what is in fact, her own ‘backyard’.

So too does she approach the culture of the region with sensitivity and what appeared to me as local knowledge. The main character within this novel is an indigenous woman, a fact that is inferred through the narrative rather than openly conveyed. I pondered on this while reading and I have come to the conclusion that the author has perhaps written it this way as a means of conveying a greater message: that the people who inhabit this remote part of Northern Territory are Territorians first. That is their primary identity, because perhaps life there poses enough challenges without drawing other distinctions.

That’s my impression anyway, but there is a firm chance I am over-reading what is essentially a rural romance adventure aimed at entertainment and pure escapism. Either way, it all came together nicely and Caked with Dust was a pleasant way to close out my Easter Sunday.

Thanks is extended to the author for providing me with a review copy of Caked with Dust.

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Caked in Dust

Self-Published

Released 20th April 2020

Book Review: The Girl She Was by Rebecca Freeborn

The Girl She Was…
About the Book:

At the cafe in the small town of Glasswater Bay where she works after school, seventeen-year-old Layla enters into a volatile relationship with her married boss.

Twenty years later, she receives a message from her former boss’s wife.

As Layla relives the events from her youth that have shaped her present, her past starts to infiltrate her life in a way she can no longer ignore.

She’s run from her town, her friends and the memory of what she’s done. Now she must face them all.

My Thoughts:

The Girl She Was is a blisteringly good read, but I’ll be honest with you from the get-go: it’s also achingly sad and even a little bit horrifying. Domestic violence is never easy to read about but when it involves a seventeen-year-old girl and an older man it takes on a particular shade of nasty.

‘I sat down on the lid of the toilet, my head in my hands. Was I bad because I let him do those things to me? Was there a part of me that liked being treated like that? Why hadn’t I ever asked him to stop?’

The story is narrated by Layla as both a seventeen-year-old (the girl she was) and as a thirty-seven-year-old (the woman she is now). Layla is a woman haunted by her past, filled with self-loathing, not only for her younger self, but also for the woman she sees in the mirror each day. Her relationship history is filled with countless degrading sexual encounters and violent boyfriends, all stemming back to her very first relationship: the one she had at seventeen with her married boss.

‘I couldn’t understand why I found it so impossible to say no to him, why he was always able to convince me that I needed him.’

Rebecca Freeborn skilfully steers us through this relationship and allows us to comprehend exactly how a woman might find herself caught in such a violent and inescapable situation. The age difference – in this case eleven years, but to her seventeen, this was significant for Layla. The flattery and devotion in the initial stages. The false promises and excuses. The sexual control and dominance. The gas-lighting. The physical violence. The threats and stalking. All of it creeping in and destroying Layla, bit by bit until she could barely even recognise herself. Yes, this was a tough read, but it’s an utterly important one. Note though, this novel does contain many scenes of sexual violence which may be distressing for some.

‘And finally, I realised the truth. How had I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt when he’d given me so many demonstrations of the violence inside him? That look in his eyes … a man like that wasn’t capable of love. And there was nothing I’d ever be able to do to change that. It wasn’t my fault.’

There are many issues hung out to dry within this novel, too many for me to pick apart and examine here, plus, I don’t want to pre-empt your thoughts if you go ahead and read it (which I hope you do). But one thing I want to focus on is the shame cast onto women who are abused. When Layla’s relationship with Scott became known publicly, she was shamed as a slut, a home wrecker – even by her friends; and thanks to his relentless gas-lighting, Layla believed this. And she went on believing this, on and on through successive abusive relationships. Even in her marriage, which was not abusive, all was not well. She still believed this about herself, loathed herself, her body, her face. It was heartbreaking. One other thing I want to particularly mention was how the author introduced the damage that certain expectations about and attitudes towards women can do. Layla’s husband Cam was a decent man, but he had his own attitudes about women that were not exactly healthy and this ridiculous idea that Layla needed to be a clean slate for him; like a child crossed with an ostrich, not wanting to hear a thing about her past. To someone as damaged as Layla was, this was even more damaging. I’m glad the author introduced this into the story and made addressing it an integral part of the plot.

‘Everything within Layla resisted the term. She wasn’t mentally ill; she was just inadequate. But maybe she didn’t deserve to feel like this. Maybe it wasn’t normal. Maybe she could be free of this constant, dragging burden.’

The strong themes of female friendship were a lovely bonus within this novel and I particularly enjoyed Layla’s 20-year high school reunion. This is very much a novel for our times and while it deals with extremely heavy and distressing themes, I believe it does so with a meticulous attention to raising awareness and a high degree of affectability. Compelling and highly recommended, add this one to your reading list today.

Thanks is extended to Pantera Press for providing me with a review copy via NetGalley of The Girl She Was.

About the Author:

Rebecca Freeborn lives in the beautiful Adelaide Hills with a husband, three kids, a dog, a cat, a horse, more books than she can fit in her bookcase and an ever-diminishing wine collection.

She has a Bachelor of Arts in Professional and Creative Communications and now works as a communications and content editor for the South Australian Government where she screams into the void against passive voice and unnecessary capitalisation.

Rebecca loves strong, witty female characters, and wrote Hot Pursuit because she wanted to escape the focus on fashion and personal appearance that is so common in contemporary women’s fiction. Her second book, Misconception, explores the silence around stillbirth and miscarriage.

She writes before the sun comes up and spends her moments of spare time reading novels and feminist articles and compulsively checking Facebook.

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The Girl She Was

Published by Pantera Press

Releases 31st March 2020

The Week That Was…

Second week of the Easter school holidays and it seems to have flown by. Youngest son began working in the bakery department at Coles this week. It seems odd to think that all of my children are not really children anymore. Easter weekend was spent quietly enjoying each other’s company with chocolate, plenty of other food, Pims (for me at least), and hot chocolate laced with a drop of Baileys (for all). There was also a lot of Scrabble. Mid week we changed to Monopoly, The Walking Dead version, and it turns out youngest son is a Monopoly master, beating me at my own game. He’s become addicted to the power now!

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Joke of the week comes to you courtesy of my youngest son who set this up and then pranked me by telling me the toilet was smoking. I had visions of vapour and rising sewerage as I raced up the hallway:

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The Smoking Toilet

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What I’ve been watching:

Inevitably, there was going to be more TV than usual. I watched both seasons of Jamestown and am now eagerly awaiting season 3 to air in Australia. It’s currently only on US Prime.

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And then I watched this:

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I may never recover…

Most of the book and the original film had clearly been blocked from my memory on account of the terror. And now I remember…