• Books and reading

    Welcome back Cormac Reilly: ‘The Unquiet Grave’ by Dervla McTiernan

    Have you heard of the Irish bog bodies? Gruesome topic, I know, but fascinating in its own way. The peat bogs occasionally reveal bodies of people who have died long ago, corpses preserved in the special environment in which they fell. Some of them thousands of years old, bearing signs of strange ritual torture or sacrificial customs from long ago.

    This is the setting of the opening scene of Irish-Australian Dervla McTiernan’s new mystery novel. A body is discovered in a Galway bog. There are ritualistic mutilations on the body, just like those from ancient times. But on closer inspection it is not an historic corpse, but the body of the local teacher, a man who went missing two years earlier.

    The investigation is led by Cormac Reilly, a welcome return to the pages after some stand-alone works by McTiernan set in the US (What Happened to Nina? and The Murder Rule) I’ve read those novels and they are good, but I do think her books set in Ireland are the stronger for the brilliant settings and the fully fleshed out characters who inhabit them, Cormac in particular.

    He is a good detective with a strong moral compass which in earlier books has led him into difficulties with colleagues and ‘the system’ and in this novel he confronts new dilemmas. Not least of which is being asked by his ex-partner Emma to help her find her missing husband Finn, who has disappeared while on a work trip in Paris. It’s a distraction that Cormac really doesn’t need but he is a generous man and still genuinely cares about Emma and so he becomes involved, against his better judgement.

    Complicating matters further are other new murder cases to solve, possibly connected to the first, possibly ‘copycat’ cases, possibly completely coincidental. It’s up to Cormac and his team to figure out if there are connections or – worst case scenario – a serial killer at large.

    The cases are eventually solved but for Cormac and his partner Peter, the moral questions to do with the application of the law and justice are then front and centre. Does arresting the person who commits a crime really serve justice in this case?

    As in the best crime and mystery fiction, this novel leaves you with much to think about even after the case is solved and the last page turned.

    The Unquiet Grave is published by HarperCollins in April 2024.
    My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.

  • Books and reading

    Twisty mystery: ‘The Ledge’ by Christian White

    I picked up White’s latest mystery novel with great relief. Why? I had just ploughed through a tome-like, rather tedious and repetitive 444 page novel which I was extremely glad to have finished – one of those irritating books that are just intruiging enough to keep you wanting to know how it all pans out but makes you really, really wish you’d picked up the skill of speed-reading somewhere along the way.

    Anyway.

    I had read Christian Whilte’s best-selling The Wife and the Widow so I knew The Ledge would be one of those books that would keep me turning the page without a yawn or a desire for speed-reading skills. And there would be a super twist.

    I was not wrong.

    The novel centres around four teenaged friends, one of whom goes missing in 1999. Fast forward and the remaining three are now in adulthood, grown apart but harbouring a heavy secret and a pact of silence about events that took place back when they were in high school.

    When human remains are found in the bushland beneath a high rocky outcrop – the ledge of the title – things start to unravel and the burden of the secrets they carry becomes unbearable.

    White’s signature twisty ending is there – a dramatic one that had me almost spluttering ‘wait, what?…’ as I rifled back through pages to see if I’d missed something. Still not sure if I buy the twist but that’s OK, I often don’t in novels of this kind. Twists are fun and keep you reading but for me, never the main point of the novel.

    Though I read this quickly, it’s not a trivial murder mystery, as I think it does deal with issues other than a simple ‘who done it?’

    There is a deeper theme in this one, I think. It is really a coming of age story, about masculinity, adulthood, friendship and loyalty, small towns and the strengths and hurts they can bestow on their inhabitants.

    The Ledge was published by Affirm Press in 2024

  • Books and reading

    Simplicity & austerity: ‘Stone Yard Devotional’ by Charlotte Wood

    For some reason, I had resisted picking up a copy of Charlotte Wood’s 2024 Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, though I had read and admired her earlier works such as The Weekend and The Natural Way of Things.

    A contemplative work, about a middle-aged woman seeking solace in a religious community on the sparse Monaro Plains of southeastern NSW? It sounded too quiet, too contemplative, too…austere.

    It is indeed all of those things.

    The setting, after all, hardly invites images of lush rolling pastures. The Monaro, frequently drought-affected, frost-bitten in winter, is a harsh environment at the best of times. The region has its own appeal but it is definitely an austere kind of beauty.

    And the retreat at which the unnamed narrator arrives at the novel’s opening is an unembellished place where routine and simplicity prevail.

    The reader is privy to the inner life of the narrator so that we experience these details through her eyes and live the day-to-day there with her.

    Her reasons for being there are just hinted at. Difficulties in her marriage. Burnout from a demanding job in the not-for-profit environmental sector, facing down environmental crises on a daily basis. Overwhelm from the modern world’s too-busy pace.

    Understandable that she should want to escape all that for a while.

    It would be a spoiler, actually, to say much more about what happens during her time there.

    Except that the little religious backwater is in reality both a haven from and a microcosm of the outside world. The narrator has plenty of time to examine her own impulses and reactions to the daily irritations and petty doings of the community; but there are broader themes at play here too.

    Memories of shameful episodes from childhood.
    An unsolved crime from years before.
    Is it possible to both admire and dislike someone?
    Environmental impacts at the local level.
    Faith and prayer.

    Our Simone once took me to task over my ‘sneering’ about prayer. My notion of prayer was juvenile: forget this telephone line to God bullshit, she snapped, hot with impatience. It wasn’t even about God, she said, which I thought must surely be blasphemous. Praying was a way to interrupt your own habitual thinking, she told me. It’s admitting yourself into otherness, cracking open your prejudices. It’s not chitchat; it’s hard labour.
    Stone Yard Devotional ebookp170 of 308

    The novel is full of snippets of insights, of struggle, of contradictions, as the narrator tries to square her very humanness with the experience of living in a community dedicated to the religious. In the end, I suppose, what we see is the very humanity of organised religion. It is, after all, a very human construct and endeavour.

    So despite my earlier resistance, I was pleased to read this book and to give myself over to the very interior nature of its story. From a novel told from within one one person’s head and within such a small setting, it has some big ideas to think about.

    Stone Yard Devotional was published by Allen & Unwin in 2024

  • Books and reading

    Women’s wartime legacies: ‘The Surgeon of Royaumont’ by Susan Neuhaus

    I had not long finished reading and writing about another book on WWI (Soldiers Don’t Go Mad) when this new release landed on my ‘to be read’ pile. A novel, rather than non-fiction, it also deals with the dark legacies of war: the devastating injuries inflicted on young bodies which doctors and surgeons must try to repair.

    Susan Neuhaus is herself a surgeon and an ex-army officer and she has chosen to tell the story of some of the trail-blazing women who undertook this challenging task during that earlier war.

    It almost beggars belief, given how stretched the Allied armed services were then for trained and competent medical practitioners who could serve where needed, that attempts by qualified and experienced female doctors to enlist were refused. More than a dozen such women attempted and failed in Australia, but Australian women did serve as doctors overseas, most paying their own way and working in various hospitals in Britain, France, Belgium, Malta, or Turkey, among others. They did not wear the uniform of the Australian services, nor are they remembered on Australia’s memorials for those who served in the nation’s conflicts.

    This novel has gone some way to bring to light their existence through a story that weaves fictional characters, events and places with real historical ones, and the author has done a fine job in doing so.

    We meet Clara, a proud medical graduate working in a Sydney hospital, with dreams of becoming a surgeon. When war breaks out she wants to ‘do her bit’ but ambition also plays a part in what she does next. Defying her family’s wishes, she heads to Europe where she begins work at a hospital in France that is operated and managed entirely by women, not far from the Western Front where her fiance is also working as an Army doctor.

    On arrival she is almost immediately confronted by the realities of warfare and the realisation that as a woman, she faces more hurdles than the male colleagues she left behind in Sydney. This, and her impetuous nature, lead her to some unwise choices, but she is lucky to be guided by the level-headed and incredibly dedicated and more experienced head of the Royaumont Abbey Hospital where Clara is sent.

    Readers are not spared the detail of the some of the injuries confronting the surgeons and nursing staff as they work to repair shattered bodies. The contributions of other women, such as the voluntary aid detatchment who so often brought comfort and reassurance to the injured, are depicted as well.

    Clara makes mistakes, some of them with grave consequences, and struggles with her own conflicts both internal and with others; all the while holding her dream of becoming an Army surgeon close to her heart.

    Her year at Royaumont Abbey is intense, exhausting, and exacting at a personal and professional level. When she leaves to embark on her next challenge, she has learnt much and developed in ways that are surprising to her.

    The ending is unusual for a novel of this kind and possibly more realistic for it.

    Clara, the times and surrounds in which we meet her, are all presented in a way that makes her a totally believable character as she interacts with the real historical figures who also people the story. She is flawed in ways the modern reader can relate to, while we also admire the guts and determination of women like her who forged new pathways at some of history’s most difficult moments. They not only made a difference in their own time, but also opened doors for those women following them.

    The Surgeon of Royaumont is published by HQ Fiction in April 2025.
    My thanks to the publisher for a review copy.

  • Books and reading

    Beautiful challenges: ‘Murriyang: song of time’ by Stan Grant

    First up: a confession. This is one of the most difficult blog posts I have written about a book. Mostly because I have found it hard to put into words what I think – and more importantly, feel – about this particular book.

    It is beautiful.

    It is challenging.

    It is in turn confronting, comforting, confusing.

    I was very keen to read it because:
    (1) it is the first publication by Bundyi, the brand-new imprint of Simon & Schuster Publishing. Bundyi is a Wiradjuri word meaning ‘to share with me’ and the imprint is curated by well-known author and Wiradjuri woman Anita Heiss, with the aim of publishing books written, edited and designed by First Nations people. (source: https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/p/Bundyi), and

    (2) I’d heard it described as ‘in part, Grant’s response to the Voice referendum‘ and ‘a book for our current moment, and something for the ages.’
    Like many Australians, I’d been hurt and disheartened by the ‘no’ result, denying my fellow Australians of First Nation heritage both long-overdue recognition and a legitimate Voice about programs and policies that affect them. I hoped that Stan Grant’s book might offer some healing words.

    It does, and it goes further.

    The author reaches for his spiritual faith – a deeply Christian one – which he ties closely with his indigenous spirituality and deep family connections:

    I come from a spiritual people – before anything else, we are a people of the unfathomable and inexplicable, and I love that about us. We have lived here in this Country for as long as human memory, in a state beyond the measurement of time, as close as possible to God. Baiyaame, that’s my people’s name for God: a creator spirit that commands the heavens, who gave us our place and our law…
    Nothing of God was strange or unknown to us. We lived here in a thin space between Earth and Heaven – Murriyang – where the mystical realm was a breath or a touch away.

    Murriyang, pp13-14

    Grant seeks to replace his lifelong career of journalism where he covered international and domestic politics, wars, and all the tragedies that humans can bring upon ourselves – with love.

    Just love? This is where I struggle. It is such an amorphous concept. What does that mean at an individual level, or for a family, a community, a nation, for nations at war? How do we apply this in today’s world where it is a quality in very short supply?

    I won’t pretend to understand the answers to these questions. What I will say is that for me, where the book demonstrates these ideas most clearly is in the more personal parts, which are in the sections interwoven within the main narrative. Titled Babiin (meaning ‘father’ in Grant’s Wiradjuri language) these are short snippets about family, mostly to do with Stan and his father, a Wiradjuri elder and cultural leader with whom he had a sometimes troubled, yet loving relationship. It is here we understand what love can mean: not the gooey silly Hallmark card variety, but the warts-and-all, realistic kind that can endure in families through the hardest of times, as it did in Stan’s.

    Within the main narrative the author canvasses a wide range of concepts and ideas, including philosophers ancient and modern, mathematics (‘a source of mystery beyond our supposedly known world’), music (‘the heartbeat of God’), forgiveness, ageing and illness, time, nature and being on Country, memory (‘the delicate aroma of all we have been and of those we have loved’), language.

    If that sounds like a shopping list of concepts, it’s not: each of these ideas is beautifully expressed and left me wanting more, even if I sometimes felt as if I could not quite grasp the depth of what was being said.

    For me, reading Murriyang felt a little like reading the personal diary of a man who has seen – and experienced – too much suffering. It is a lament, but also a song of joy, if such a thing were possible. He is seeking solace, not in the artificial constructions of politics or society, but in the beauty of ancient spiritual beliefs and in the simplicity of love. The final pages express this beautifully:

    I won’t lie; it is confronting watching Dad and Mum enter their final years: I face my mortality. My parents have found peace and acceptance: they are happier now than at any time I can remember.
    Their days have a glorious monotony; they grasp for nothing. Whenever I am there, it is the simple things that mean the most: a cup of tea becomes a ritual. Dad is showing me how to live and when my time comes to pass, this is what I will remember.
    Murriyang p251

    Murriyang was published by Bundyi, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in 2024.

  • Books and reading

    War, mental health…and poetry: ‘Soldiers Don’t Go Mad’ by Charles Glass

    This is the story of the very beginning of recognition of the condition suffered by so many veterans of war, now known as ‘post traumatic stress disorder’ or PTSD. During and after World War I, it was often colloquially called ‘shell-shock’ – but that was when it was recognised as a medical condition. Too often, it was seen as malingering or cowardice and sufferers ridiculed, abused or even executed for desertion.

    The author describes the particular conditions of this war that led to the high numbers of both officers and enlisted soldiers suffering from this ‘nervous and mental shock’: high explosive artillery, rapid-fire machine guns, modern mortar shells, aerial bombardment, poison gas and flamethrowers, and trench warfare in which soldiers were often forced into a helpless, passive position for hours, days or weeks at a time. In other words, warfare of an industrial nature on an industrial scale.

    Something had to be done to restore soldiers to some semblance of health, when physical wounds had been healed but the mutism, shaking, nightmares, paralysis, or blindness remained with no apparent physical cause. Craiglockhart was a specialist military hospital established in Scotland specifically for the care of shell-shocked British officers. By the end of its first year of operation, it had admitted 556 patients. By the war’s end, it had treated over 1,800.

    Unfortunately, enlisted men received no special care and were either expected to return to active service or invalided out of the army with no treatment available to them.

    The book describes the care provided at Craiglockhart under the direction of the two principal psychiatrists: Dr William Halse Rivers and Dr Arthur Brock; two men whose treatment approaches and general philosophies differed widely but when matched with the ‘right’ patients, they were able to effect great change for the officers involved.

    And this is where the poetry part of the equation comes in.

    Two officers who were perfectly aligned with their therapists’ approaches were the (later to become famous) war poets Wilfred Owen (treated by Dr Brock) and Siegfried Sassoon (treated by Dr Rivers). Poetry was at this time a revered literary form and each of these men found solace and expression of their wartime experiences in writing.

    When Wilfred Owen first came to the hospital he was young, inexperienced and at the very beginning of his literary career. He was thrilled to meet the older, published Sassoon, who became something of a mentor, and Owen’s writing developed as the two men exchanged ideas and discussed their work. All the time they were also engaged with the various therapeutic programs set out for them by their respective doctors.

    Sassoon is an interesting character, because he came to despise what he began to see as the deliberate continuation of the war by the Allied governments: rather than seeking peace he believed they were prolonging the war in order to crush Germany completely. He was so appalled by this that he initially risked court-martial rather than obey orders to return to the front. Again, an example of the difference in treatment of officers (usually from upper and middle class ranks) and enlisted soldiers (usually working class men). Sassoon had also won a Military Cross for bravery early in the war so his stance proved very embarrassing for the War Office at the time.

    When the Armistice was finally declared in November 1918, he described it as: ‘a loathsome ending to the loathsome tragedy of the last four years’ and ‘They mean to skin Germany alive. A peace to end peace.’ Looking at what happened just two decades later, who could argue he was wrong?

    What took Sassoon back to the front was not support for the war but for the soldiers who served under him and concern for their welfare. He felt guilty (as many at Craiglockhart did) for living in relative comfort while his men suffered.

    Owen, too, was discharged and returned to active duty. Unlike Sassoon, he did not see the Armistice declaration. He was killed in northern France at the age of twenty-six, just two weeks before the cease-fire. As Charles Glass notes in this book:
    ‘Owen was a success for Craiglockhart and for ergotherapy [the therapeutic approach of Dr Brock], but for him the outcome was death.’ (p279)

    There are many interesting characters in this book: military people, early figures in the field of psychotherapy, well-known literary and artistic people of the era. For me, the stand-out ‘character’, if you will, is the poetry, snippets of which are quoted throughout, illustrating the state of mind of the two main poets discussed. It is especially enlightening to see the nature of their poetry change as they discarded the patriotic ‘heroic’ themes of the era for more gritty realism as their own war experience began to bite, and in Sassoon’s case at least, his growing pacifist beliefs were reflected in his verse.

    So, here are two samples of poems by these men because they and their work should not be forgotten. Especially now as the world seems to be once again moving towards darkness.



    Wilfred Owen
    Source: Wikipedia
    Anthem for Doomed Youth
    What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
    Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
    Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
    Can patter out their hasty orisons.
    No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
    Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
    The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
    And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
    What candles may be held to speed them all?
    Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
    Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
    The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
    Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
    And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

    Wilfred Owen (written 1917, published posthumously 1920)
    Siegfried Sassoon
    Source: Wikipedia
    Aftermath
    Have you forgotten yet?...
    For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
    Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
    And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
    Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
    Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
    But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game...
    Have you forgotten yet?...
    Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

    Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--
    The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
    Do you remember the rats; and the stench
    Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--
    And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
    Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

    Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
    And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
    As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
    Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
    With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey
    Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

    Have you forgotten yet?...
    Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.

    Siegfried Sassoon (written 1919)

    Soldiers Don’t Go Mad is published by Bedford Square Publishers in March 2025.
    My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.

  • Books and reading

    The spaces between: ‘In the Margins’ by Gail Holmes

    Australian writer Gail Holmes’ debut novel is inspired by a real woman who lived in seventeenth-century England, a time when bitter Civil Wars transitioned into Puritan religious and social intolerance.

    Frances Wolfreston is a rector’s wife and as part of her role assisting her husband in his parish duties, the laws of the time require her to record the names of those who do not attend weekly church service. This sits uneasily with her, especially after her own mother is imprisoned for the crime of praying in the old, Catholic, manner. Frances is torn between her duty to her mother, to her husband and her young sons, to the church and the new government, and to those vulnerable souls in her community who need more care.

    She is also a collector and lover of books, something her mother passed on to her, and an unusual pursuit at a time when the literacy rate amongst women was very low.

    As I often do when reading a novel based on or inspired by a real person or event, I went straight to the author’s note to see which bits of the story were from the historical record. I was delighted to learn that one of the ways historians have learned about the real Frances was her habit of inscribing her name in her books. Something many of us do today without much thought, but as the author points out, a subtly powerful gesture at a time when married women had almost no property rights of their own.

    After years of researching and writing about women in my own family history, I am very attuned to the challenges of ‘finding’ women in historical documents, confined as many were to birth, marriage, and death records, and largely absent elsewhere.

    So a novel woven around the life of a real woman who lived over 370 years ago about whom sparse records exist is both a stretch and an invitation – and the author has taken up the latter with enthusiasm and sensitivity.

    This is a story about the tragedy of intolerance in all its guises (and let’s not kid outselves it went out with the Puritans). It’s also about the oppression of women in small ways and large – it touches chillingly on the witch trials of the seventeenth century – and the persecution of anyone deemed ‘different’.

    But it’s also about the small acts of kindness and even of defiance that can glue families and communities together: the seemingly insignificant things done or words spoken, often by women and sometimes by men, too, that can make a difference in one life or many.

    ‘We are like the spaces between the words of a book. The words are what people see, what they argue over, fight wars over, swoon over, collect. Yet without the spaces between, there is nothing at all. We are the spaces, Mrs Edwards.’
    ‘Yet you want to teach all these common children to read those very words.’
    ‘If you can read the words, you can begin to see the spaces.’
    In the Margins pp 273-274

    In the Margins was published by Ultimo Press in 2024.
    My thanks to the author for a copy to review.

  • Books and reading

    Harsh realities: ‘A World of Silence’ by Jo Skinner

    Classified as contemporary women’s fiction, A World of Silence deals with the all-too-timeless and pervasive issue that blights so many lives: intimate partner abuse and coercive control.

    The three women at the centre of the novel, all entirely believable and relatable, have been connected since their youth. Now in their thirties, their lives have taken different trajectories but now have reconnected, in ways not entirely welcome or comfortable for each of them.

    Kate is a psychologist with two young kids and a husband who seems more intent on reviving his music career than on his family duties. When a former client commits suicide after her violent partner is unexpectedly released from gaol, Kate can’t shake the awful images of the suffering Bea had endured at that man’s hands.

    Her best friend is Tori, a single mum who has created her dream business, a vintage clothing and furniture store, while raising her son. Tori is determined not to let the man whom she knows to be unworthy of the title of father into her boy’s life.

    When superstar football player Daryl turns up in their seaside town, complete with his beautiful blonde wife Shelley and their three children, both Kate and Tori are shaken. Daryl and Shelley have played important – and not always positive – roles in both their pasts. And now it seems they are back to upend their worlds once again.

    There is an undercurrent of tension that builds to an almost unbearable climax towards the end as the three women at the centre of the story try their best to sort out the complexities of their own situations and to help each other.

    They make mistakes – don’t we all? – and as a reader I felt moments of intense frustration (similar to watching a TV program when I want to yell at a character ‘don’t go outside! there’s someone out there with a knife!’ You know the kind of thing I mean…it seems obvious to us as readers or viewers, right?) But of course, when we are immersed in a situation in real life, it is anything but. So, good on the author for allowing her characters to be human with everyday frailties and make real, human mistakes.

    One of the key mistakes the characters make in this novel – and that people make in real life, especially around issues of partner violence and coercive control – is to keep silent. Not to speak up, speak out, share concerns, worries, hunches. So the title of this novel is spot on. And the cover illustration chillingly evocative.

    A World of Silence is a gripping read. Chances are, it may remind you of someone you know. Sadly. Novels like this are a good way of getting more understanding of these difficult issues out there into the wider community. I was pleased to read it.
    It’s published by Hawkeye Publishing in April 2025.
    My thanks to the publisher for an early copy to review.

  • Books and reading

    Love & magic for grownups: ‘Cherrywood’ by Jock Serong

    If versatility is a sign of a writer’s skill, then Australian author Jock Serong’s latest offering proves he has bucket loads of the stuff.

    From his earlier works of surprising, emotive crime fiction, to his trilogy of historical fiction beginning with Preservation, he has explored darker aspects of the human psyche and behaviour.

    Cherrywood is different in that it is a playful work that evokes themes of deep magic, while setting the work firmly in the prosaic Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy across two timelines – early twentieth century and the 1990’s.

    There are two main characters. Thomas is heir to a Scottish industrialist family fortune who gambles it all on a fanciful scheme to build a paddlesteamer to ply its trade across the bay in Edwardian-era Melbourne. The boat is to be built entirely from a load of beautiful cherrywood, whose mysterious provenance in eastern Europe forms part of the novel’s backdrop of vague menance. He travels to Australia in search of his vision, followed later by his loving wife Lucy and their young daughter Annabelle. Fortune does not favour either the family or his plans.

    In 1993, Martha is a lawyer working for a major law firm. She is a fish out of water, being clever but saddled with a conscience, in a company and surrounded by colleagues without one. One evening she stumbles across the Cherrywood, a pub she has not seen before in Fitzroy. She becomes obsessed with the place, as it seems to elude her efforts to find it again. Gradually her future, and the hotel’s, become intertwined…

    The novel has many layers, all seemingly disparate, but its brilliance is the way they all interconnect by the end. There is so much here about love, and vision, and endurance, loss and grief, about the ordinary lives of people and the hurdles we must all overcome. The magic underlying the cherrywood motif is beautiful, subtle to begin with, intruiging enough to have this reader want to push on, to find the clues, to figure it all out along with Martha.

    Readers familiar with Melbourne will enjoy the author’s descriptions of both the early years of the city and the version of thirty years ago. The Cherrywood of the title is very much at home in both.

    Cherrywood is a novel that works as a modern fable, as historical fiction, as a love letter to Melbourne, as a romance. It’s a complex and beautiful novel.
    It was published by HarperCollins in 2024.

  • Books and reading

    Unrecorded lives: ‘Tell Me Everything’ by Elizabeth Strout

    Elizabeth Strout is a genius at the small moments. The lift of an arm, the turn of a head, a hand on a shoulder. A fallen blossom. Slushy snow on a sidewalk, wet shoes. A blush, a smile. Speaking, listening, being truly heard.

    The small moments that build to make a friendship, a relationship, a marriage, a family. A life.

    Tell Me Everything features characters from previous Strout novels such as Olive Ketteridge, Oh William! Lucy By the Sea. It is now post-Covid (or not quite, because Covid doesn’t seem to really go away, does it?) and Lucy and William have remained in their Maine house near the sea. Lucy’s friendship with local lawyer Bob Burgess has developed and deepened; they take regular long walks together where they talk – and really listen – to each other.

    And who – who who who in this whole entire world – does not want to be heard?

    Tell Me Everything p198

    Meanwhile Bob has taken on the defence of a local man accused of the murder of his mother. It’s a complicated case with many layers of hurt and history to uncover and understand.

    Around Bob and Lucy, are other layers of hurt and misunderstanding as various members of their families struggle with illness, accidents, separation, grief and loss.

    How each person deals with these inevitable setbacks are what makes up this novel’s dramatic sweep. Nothing out of the ordinary: they are the kinds of stumbling blocks to be found on the paths of most of us at some point or another, unless we blessed with a totally charmed life.

    Another thread throughout are the visits Lucy pays to ninety year old Olive Kitteridge, during which they tell each other stories about people they have known – ‘unrecorded lives’. Some of the stories are almost unbearably painful, others shocking, a few mundane. But in their telling, the lives described are given meaning. And is that not what most of us seek in our lives – a meaning to the living of them?

    So, in one sense Tell Me Everything is a novel where nothing in particular happens. In another, it’s a book where a great deal is happening a great deal of the time.

    Tell Me Everything is a beautiful, gentle, heartfelt book. If you haven’t read the earlier books by this author, I would recommend you at least read Lucy by the Sea first, as it will help to place Lucy and William, Bob and Margaret, into the Maine town where this novel mainly takes place. Actually, do yourself a big favour and read all the books in this collection about Lucy, William, Bob and so on. Elizabeth Strout’s writing really is a masterclass in ‘less is more’, in subtlety and in using everyday language and keen observation to great effect.

    Tell Me Everything was published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, in 2024.