Matilda Is Missing in Aussie Readers

Nov 08, 2011 Bree T rated it it was amazing

Shelves: australian, library-reads, mystery, contemporary

Garry and Softie were an unlikely couple from the start. Softie had a job at a national bank and owned her own flat in St Kilda, near the beach. Garry had drifted from job to job and worked driving taxi’s when they met one night at a ‘pop up restaurant’. Softie was getting to the stage where her biological clock was ticking and she didn’t have too many years left in which to have a baby. And Garry, well, he’d been married before, but too young and it didn’t work out. He thinks he’s ready for a f Garry and Softie were an unlikely couple from the start. Softie had a job at a national bank and owned her own flat in St Kilda, near the beach. Garry had drifted from job to job and worked driving taxi’s when they met one night at a ‘pop up restaurant’. Softie was getting to the stage where her biological clock was ticking and she didn’t have too many years left in which to have a baby. And Garry, well, he’d been married before, but too young and it didn’t work out. He thinks he’s ready for a family now. And a guy that’s ready for a family seems to be all that Softie needs.

So Softie gets pregnant but before the baby is even born, before they are even married, there are problems. Softie is embarrassed by Garry’s lack of class, by his loud and boorish ways and the way he treats a friend of hers who is gay. Garry on the other hand, barely notices anything wrong, except that whatever he does isn’t done the way that Softie likes it. Still, they get married when Softie is 8 months along and then Matilda is born.

Both Garry and Softie are doting parents, just in different ways. Softie has a book that she uses to set Matilda’s routines whereas Garry is more a winging it sort of parent. Despite the fact that they both love Matilda, it isn’t enough and Softie begins to withdraw, finally taking Matilda and leaving Garry. What happens next is a custody battle, a messy custody battle as Garry fights for access to Matilda and Softie fights to restrict it because Matilda is so young. They end up in Family Court and in front of a judge known for his sympathy towards fathers and the swing away for restricting their access to merely every second weekend.

Custody battles are a nasty business, stressful and upsetting for both parents and for the children. It’s the sort of issue where it’s hard not to take sides, even inadvertently. Garry and Softie’s story starts long before Matilda Is Missing opens and neither of them is our narrator. Instead that job falls to the school-friend of the judge who handed down the decision on Matilda’s custody hearing. The judge, Frank Brooks, having since passed away to cancer has entrusted all the case notes to his long time friend Barry, thinking that maybe, he made a mistake on this one. Through cassette tapes of Garry and Softie’s recorded sessions with a psychologist, we learn their story along with Barry.

Barry is a man in his 60′s, born and raised in Footscray and retired now, pottering around with his wife Pat. Their youngest son Brian has just found himself about to be divorced and cleverly woven in is a less public custody battle away from the Family Court and a less publicised issue. Barry and Pat have two grandchildren affected by this separation and a third that was their ex-daughter in laws’s child before she married their son who they loved as though he were their own blood grandchild. Pat’s overbearing attempts to see the children and interfere in the separation have seen their visits dwindle to nothing and through Barry and Pat, we see two very different approaches to what is a painful issue – the rights of grandparents to see their grandchildren during and after a painful separation where the parents are trying to figure things out.

Matilda Is Missing once again showcases Caroline Overington’s ability to slip into the voice of a character that is far different from herself. In I Came To Say Goodbye we had Med, also a 60-something Australian man, salt of the Earth, and now we have Barry, who is a kind and methodical man, bewildered by what is left to him by Frank but determined to get through it and get to the bottom of it. He doesn’t google the case like Pat does, and skip to the ending and what happens. He listens to the recordings in order, he reads the documents, he puts the pieces together himself. All the while he is hearing about Garry and Softie, their lives, their marriage, their daughter Matilda, he is also narrating the story going on in his and Pat’s life where Pat is fighting hard, trying all sorts of tricks to see their grandchildren and Barry is more a backseat, let Nerida and Brian sort it out first, then we’ll see about the kids, sort of approach.

In having Barry as our narrator, we see Garry and Softie as a whole, rather than being presented with one side of it. To be perfectly honest, neither of them are particularly likable people and the fact that their marriage turns into a train wreck isn’t surprising, given the reason they got married (particularly in Softie’s case) and also that they are extremely incompatible in pretty much every way. Their personal grievances with each other are irrelevant though, as the issue is Matilda and what is best for her. Often (probably mostly) what is best for children is lost in the drama that is custody battles and Family Court and the need to win there and this is highlighted so very starkly in this novel. Both Garry and Softie are somewhat obsessed with obtaining the outcome that best suits them personally, rather than looking at their young daughter and agreeing to work together for what would benefit her. Cutting a young child off from a father she loves isn’t beneficial, but nor is putting her with 2 parents on a 50/50 basis where one isn’t used to caring for her full time and when both have such different parenting ideas.

I read this book in about 3 or 4 hours and loved every page of it. The Australian characters, such as Barry and Pat (who quite frankly, reminds me a bit of my own mother-in-law except mine is Sicilian) resonate with me and the way in which the story is told is riveting. I lived for the chapters that dealt with Garry or Softie’s next therapy session, hearing their own words on how they found certain things was an excellent way of having the complete picture given to the reader. Each believe they are so firmly in the right and they should be the ‘winner’ of custody, but really in such an issue, there are no winners. Matilda, and all the children out there just like her, are the losers most of all. The issue of Barry and Pat and their grandchildren also stayed with me as I never think too much about what happens with other family members when there are messy and nasty relationship breakdowns. Grandparents play a very important role in their grandchildren’s lives and to be separated must be equally upsetting for both parties.

It’s not easy to highlight important social issues and wrap them up in a story that’s so readable without being a cliche but Caroline Overington has managed to do it once again, drawing on her background as a reporter on the Family Court. I can’t wait for her next novel – it’s going to be a long wait I think! ...more

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Dec 30, 2011 Paula Phillips rated it really liked it

Reading the blurb of the book compared to the book itself will prepare you for only half of the story , a snippet that doesn't get revealed till halfway through the novel. From the title and the synopsis , I had a whole different view of what the novel would be like and about and as I turned the first page , I would be in for a shock. The novel starts not with Gary, Softie and Matilda but in fact with an entirely different family named "the Harrisons". Husband and Wife , Pat and Barry Harrison. Reading the blurb of the book compared to the book itself will prepare you for only half of the story , a snippet that doesn't get revealed till halfway through the novel. From the title and the synopsis , I had a whole different view of what the novel would be like and about and as I turned the first page , I would be in for a shock. The novel starts not with Gary, Softie and Matilda but in fact with an entirely different family named "the Harrisons". Husband and Wife , Pat and Barry Harrison. The story begins with a struggle of their own , their youngest son Brian is getting married to a bartender named Nerida who is a single mother with a 4yr old son named Ethan. Pat, from the beginning has shown nothing but dislike for Nerida and it will soon come to bite her own the bum as Nerida falls pregnant not once but twice with Brian's children. Soon Pat becomes a doting grandmother to Ethan, Jett and Baxter . However, the happiness will be shortlived as Nerida is caught cheating on Brian and she is so mad at Brian for leaving her , that she refuses to let Pat see her grandchildren. What becomes as a Grandmother wanting to spend time with her grandchildren, will hit National news when Pat decides to go for the extreme. Meanwhile Barry, stuck in the middle visits an old Family Court Judge friend of his Frank who three weeks later passes and leaves Barry , a court case and files - Monaghan vs Hartshon . This case was about Gary, Softie and the little girl named Matilda and what started as a loving family ended up in a deadly, costly and ugly court battle over two year old Matilda. As the case goes along, we see that it soon becomes all about Gary and Softie rather than the most important thing Matilda. As we read Pat and Barry discovering more about the case, we start to see similarities and will discover the lengths a family or someone who we love and they love us will go to save one another . Something interesting that I picked up about the Cases is that and I guess it relates in reality too , is that most custody cases end up being about what the parents want and need, rather than the childs even though they are the most important thing in the world and the battle is for their safety and welfare.
Another great read written by Caroline Overington :) and ...more

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Jun 10, 2016 Tanya rated it liked it

When I started reading this, I thought I'd picked up a different book. The story of Matilda isn't told the way you would expect - rather it is told through the eyes of a 60-something retiree, who's own son is experiencing a martial breakdown. Matilda's story is told through tape recordings of her parents speaking with a psychologist.

What I did find fascinating, was the different perspectives Garry and Softie had of the same events. The same as any situation - his interpretation, her interpretati ...more

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