JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Hovering by Rhett Davis

The city was in the same place. But was it the same city? Alice stands outside her family’s 1950s red brick veneer, unsure if she should approach. It has been sixteen years, but it’s clear she is out of options.

Lydia opens the door to a familiar stranger – thirty-nine, tall, bony, pale. She knows her sister immediately. But something isn’t right. Meanwhile her son, George, is upstairs, still refusing to speak, and lost in a virtual world of his own design.

Nothing is as it was, and while the sisters’ resentments flare, it seems that the city too is agitated. People wake up to streets that have rearranged themselves, in houses that have moved to different parts of town. Tensions rise and the authorities have no answers. The internet becomes alight with conspiracy theories.

As the world lurches around them, Alice’s secret will be revealed, and the ground at their feet will no longer be so firm.

Rhett Davis’ debut novel Hovering is an ambitious and imaginative novel straddling the border between literary and magical realism. It feels like one of those literary novels that is so clever in its imagery and symbolism, you can’t quite capture it all in one sitting.

Rhett’s novel feels unique in its form — with short chapters resembling a staccato stylistic technique, Rhett experiments with form throughout the novel. From HTML code to chat room or forum conversations, interview transcripts, text messages and spreadsheets detailing movements and dialogue, Hovering does make you feel like you’re moving through some sort of surreal tale.

“Some on the forums recommended exercise, so if he felt an attack coming, he tried to go for a run. When he ran, the noise of his blood drowned out the noise of what he thought might be the universe.”

Anyone who has lived away from home, or spent some time living away from where they were raised, will recognise some of the feelings and emotions brought to life in this story — the strange complexity of returning home and feeling like it’s different to what you remembered.

Written in what feels like a staccato voice — short scenes and chapters — we gain glimpses of the main characters like puzzle pieces. Two sisters with damaged history, and a teenage boy who won’t speak. A town that feels disrupted and fractured, like it’s shifted in recent years. It throws the reader into a sense of (intended) unease.

“The next day, the front door of Fay and Luis Montana’s house had been moved several metres to the left. It now opened on their bedroom. Fay stood at the door in a Malinda Banksia Festival 20—t-shirt, looking out at the street in some confusion.”

Themes in the novel include climate change, climate collapse, art and identity, artistic morality and legacy. Hovering explores urban development and how a city can adapt or reconfigure over time, soon becoming something you don’t even recognise.

Admittedly, the novel feels really slow-paced, but I sense that’s intentional. The short scenes counteract this and help keep the story moving without making the reader feel like events are happening too slowly.

“Alice had left Fraser in a rage. She was angry at her sister, at her parents, at her friends, at the city itself. They were all so backwards. They wanted nothing but comfort and gourmet burgers and new screens. They lived off the proceeds of a land that wasn’t theirs and permitted it by acknowledging if before public events and occasionally raising the Indigenous flag.”

Taut and original, Hovering is recommended for readers of literary fiction. Readership skews 30+

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Hovering
Rhett Davis
March 2022
Hachette Book Publishers

The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont

In 1926, Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days. Only I know the truth of her disappearance.

I’m no Hercule Poirot. I’m her husband’s mistress.

Agatha Christie’s world is one of glamorous society parties, country house weekends, and growing literary fame.

Nan O’Dea’s world is something very different. Her attempts to escape a tough London upbringing during the Great War led to a life in Ireland marred by a hidden tragedy.

After fighting her way back to England, she’s set her sights on Agatha. Because Agatha Christie has something Nan wants. And it’s not just her husband.

Despite their differences, the two women will become the most unlikely of allies. And during the mysterious eleven days that Agatha goes missing, they will unravel a dark secret that only Nan holds the key to . . .

Nina de Gramont’s The Christie Affair is an enjoyable reimagining of the unexplained eleven-day disappearance of famous crime writer Agatha Christie in 1926. This psychological thriller offers a compelling and concocted tale of why Agatha disappeared and what transpired during the days she was gone.

In December 1926, Agatha’s husband tells her he wishes to divorce her, so he can marry his mistress Nan O’Dea. After disappearing that night, Agatha resurfaces eleven days later at a luxurious hotel under a false name. In between those two events we come to understand more about Agatha and O’Dea, as their stories interweave and storylines are thrust into the past. A mysterious double murder also weaves its way into the novel — its resolution offering one of the biggest twists in the book.

“My father had grown up on a farm just outside the fishing village of Ballycotton. Since I’d been born he’d gone back to visit once or twice when his brother paid the way. But there’d never been enough money for us all to travel there.The thought of my going at all, let alone for a whole summer, was thrilling.”

Both Agatha and O’Dea are relatable, liked characters. One might start the novel sympathising only with Agatha, but over time, as we come to discover why O’Dea is desperate to marry Agatha’s husband, we learn to empathise with her plight.

Nina weaves different storylines and time periods together with ease, crafting a really great novel. The writing is slick. Observations are stark and dialogue is realistic. She does well to capture setting and atmosphere, transporting us back to the 1920s with this emotionally charged story.

“Once I became her stepmother I’d encourage her to be the sort of person who folded her clothes and put them away, who attended to her own discarded wrappings. But for now it wasn’t my place to say a word.”

There’s an omniscient angle to every chapter, allowing the story to travel beyond just Nan’s first person narration. Whilst sometimes the narration and Nan’s point of view grew confusing — Nan talks about others as if she knows everything, delving into their minds and observations and this can sometimes feel disorientating and like we were shifting POV — Nina was an incredibly complex and well-rounded character, and perhaps my favourite in the book.

In saying that, the storyline I enjoyed the most was Nan’s childhood flashbacks — 19, pregnant and living at the convent. I found her to be a lot more raw in these scenes, because she’s young and naive, and trapped in this lion’s den. I almost wished we spent more time in this setting, or perhaps if these flashbacks came earlier in the novel. It provides more context around Nan’s character, and weaves together the reasons why she’s so determined to end Agatha’s marriage.

“I thought Finbarr wouldn’t mind seeing tears. I’d never known him to mind anything. Still, I smiled dutifully at the camera, sitting on the photographer’s stool, sincere in my happiness as I imagined looking at Finbarr’s cheerful face. Some day later I went on my own to collect it. It was a pretty picture, so much prettier than I was in real life…”

Inventive, clever and engaging, The Christie Affair is recommended for readers of historical fiction. The crime element to this novel is quite small and does not take up much of the book, so this isn’t the book to pick up if you’re just looking for a crime to solve.

Readership skews female, 30+

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Christie Affair
Nina de Gramont
February 2022
Pan Macmillan Book Publishers

The Islands by Emily Brugman

In the mid-1950s, a small group of Finnish migrants set up camp on Little Rat, a tiny island in an archipelago off the coast of Western Australia. The crayfishing industry is in its infancy, and the islands, haunted though they are by past shipwrecks, possess an indefinable allure.

Drawn here by tragedy, Onni Saari is soon hooked by the stark beauty of the landscape and the slivers of jutting coral onto which the crayfishers build their precarious huts. Could these reefs, teeming with the elusive and lucrative cray, hold the key to a good life?

The Islands is the sweeping story of the Saari family: Onni, an industrious and ambitious young man, grappling with the loss of a loved one; his wife Alva, quiet but stoic, seeking a sense of belonging between the ramshackle camps of the islands and the dusty suburban lots of the mainland; and their pensive daughter Hilda, who dreams of becoming the skipper of her own boat. As the Saari’s try to build their future in Australia, their lives entwine with those of the fishing families of Little Rat, in myriad and unexpected ways.

A stunning, insightful story of a search for home.

Emily Brugman’s debut novel The Islands is a multi-generational literary tale that documents Finnish migration to the Abrolhos Islands off the coast of Western Australia.

Although this is a fictional tale, The Islands is heavily influenced by the stories of Emily’s ancestors from 1959 – 1972, as well as extensive research into these islands and cray fishermen from the mid-20th century. The Islands is set across many decades and moves back and forth between different members of the family. Over the course of the novel, we observe each character during pivotal moments in their lives.

“A year for the Saaris was now lived in two parts: on-season and off-season. Their first season on Little Rat had been a moderate success, from an economic standpoint, and the couple looked ahead with a suspicious and careful optimism characteristic of their people.”

At its core, The Islands is about the pursuit of a sustainable and secure life. But it’s also about resilience — both physical and emotional — and perseverance. We witness what that can encapsulate whether you’re 40, 60 or 14. In this isolated and secluded setting, we meet women experiencing loneliness, experiencing childbirth for the first time. We read as their children then mature into teenagers within this barren but plentiful landscape — we follow them as they discover impulses and sexual desire. We come across men working to earn for their families, having arrived with the hope of a land that provides.

“They carried him to camp and laid him down on his side, covering him with a blanket. Hilda stood watching from a corner. Helvi was crying and so was Aiti, although she was trying not to. Hilda wanted to cry too, but she didn’t think that would be right after what she’d done. So she just stood there. And Lauri didn’t move.”

Scattered throughout the novel are Finnish verses, then translated into English. By embedding Finnish language into the novel, readers are further immersed in culture, community and these characters’ historical journey.

There is a strong sense of song and music throughout the book, and the Finnish verses also allow the characters to have a stronger connection to their heritage because it feels like knowledge is being passed between generations.

“Towards the close of his first season, Onni woke to find Little Rat covered in dead shearwaters, their dishevelled bodies in oily black heaps on the coral ground. Those shaggy mutton birds, as the Aussies called them. They flew thousands of miles every year, across open ocean, through torrents of rain and wind. They didn’t always make it, and every so often they’d wash up on shorelines in their hundreds. A wreck. That was what they called it, when they washed up like that.”

Evocative and emotional, Emily Brugman’s The Islands is recommended for literary readers, and fans of grand familial sagas steeped in wild, forbidding settings like a Hannah Kent novel. Readership skews female, 30+

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Islands
Emily Brugman
February 2022
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers

Lily by Rose Tremain

Nobody knows yet that she is a murderer…

Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter’s night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. Lily is fostered by an affectionate farming family in rural Suffolk, enjoying a brief childhood idyll before she is returned to the Hospital, where she is punished for her rebellious spirit. Released into the harsh world of Victorian London, Lily becomes a favoured employee at Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium, but all the while she is hiding a dreadful secret…

Across the years, policeman Sam Trench keeps watch over the young woman he once saved. When Sam meets Lily again, there is an instant attraction between them and Lily is convinced that Sam holds the key to her happiness – but might he also be the one to uncover her crime and so condemn her to death?

Set in 1850s and 1860s Victorian London, Rose Tremain’s 16th novel Lily is a revenge tale exploring rejection, poverty, guilt and redemption.

As a baby, Lily Mortimer is abandoned on a cold London evening at the gates of a park. Discovered by a patrolling police constable, she is taken to the London Foundling Hospital. Despite spending the first six years of her life in a loving foster home, she is returned to the hospital for the remainder of her childhood and is subjected to years of abuse that charts her path towards murder.

“She dreams of her death. It comes as a cold October dawn is breaking in the London sky. A sack is put over her head. Through the weave of the burlap, she can take her last look at the world, which is a cluster of tiny squares of grey light, and she thinks whyever did I struggle so long and so hard to make my way in a place which was bent on my destruction ever since I came into it?”

Lily is a relatively short novel, written in third person and moving between past and present seamlessly. I rather enjoyed reading about Lily’s upbringing in the foster home, and then again when she’s older and attempting to come to terms with her recent murderous act. Despite being offered shelter and family, Lily does venture out on her own to make her own way, highlighting how independent she’s grown since the time she was a terrified six-year-old attempting to run away from the hospital.

Despite being a rather bleak tale, there are bright moments. It may be short-lived, but Lily’s friendship with Bridget in the foundling hospital is really wholesome, and so is her relationship with her foster mother. When she’s older, Lily’s friendship with her employer Belle is supportive and it offers Lily opportunities she never would’ve had available to her.

“She thought of the downward threads as soldiers standing in a perfect line and the taut loops joining them along the edge of the fabric as their arms reaching out and reaching out to one another, to give themselves courage, until the line was ended.”

Admittedly, the build-up to the murder feels a bit slim, as is the confession and subsequent conclusion of the novel. The abuse that Lily suffered isn’t overly present in the novel, so it feels like an afterthought at times. As such, this novel felt more like an exploration into her life, rather than her murderous act, because we spend so much time just setting up Lily’s story.

Whilst I genuinely did enjoy reading this novel, it did feel a little muddled at times — like even the author wasn’t sure what kind of book she wanted to write. Is she exploring the story of a poor orphan in Victorian London? Is she exploring the story of how someone becomes a murderer? Or perhaps tries to get away with it? Or is this also a story of a young orphan girl trying to find her mother, because that was a momentary thread in this novel that wasn’t really fleshed out or resolved.

“A ‘good’ life. How can you live a good life if you have been precious to nobody and made to feel burdened by shame? How can your heart not be vengeful?”

An atmospheric setting with rich, compelling characters, Lily is recommended for readers of historical fiction and period fiction. Readership skews female, 25+

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Lily: A Tale of Revenge
Rose Tremain
November 2021
Penguin Random House Publishers

The Shut Ins by Katherine Brabon

Mai and Hikaru went to school together in the city of Nagoya, until Hikaru disappeared when they were eighteen.

It is not until ten years later, when Mai runs into Hikaru’s mother, Hiromi Sato, that she learns Hikaru has become a hikikomori, a recluse unable to leave his bedroom for years. In secret, Hiromi Sato hires Mai as a ‘rental sister’, to write letters to Hikaru and encourage him to leave his room.

Mai has recently married J, a devoted salaryman with conservative ideas about the kind of wife Mai will be. The renewed contact with her old school friend Hikaru stirs Mai’s feelings of invisibility within her marriage. She is frustrated with her life and knows she will never fulfill J’s obsession with the perfect wife and mother.

What else is there for Mai to do but to disappear herself?

Katherine Brabon’s The Shut Ins is literary fiction set in Japan, exploring family and connection, and what it means to belong to another. As the book is steeped in Japanese culture and connection, the book also explores societal, familial and generational pressure — how society places unexpected pressure on its inhabitants, and is quick to condemn those who don’t appear to conform.

Broken up into four sections, we move between housewife Mai, escort Sadako, the mother of Mai’s childhood friend Hiromi Sato, and the childhood friend himself Hiraku. Mai and Hiraku are written in first person, and the other two perspectives in third. Each section of the novel resembles a short story — a snapshot of that person’s life as it interacts with another character from the book. Once completed, we move to the next perspective and we do not revisit the previous character’s mind.

Interwoven throughout the book are reflections from Katherine about her time living in Japan, and how her interactions and experiences helped shape the book.

“The apartment does not feel familiar to me, despite all the years I lived here. With a frightening, cold feeling, I think of the apartment where I live with J, that it is not home to me either.”

Katherine captures the setting and environment with ease. Some critics have compared her to Murakami, and I can see the similarities in writing style — the stripped back, bare nature of it all. The blunt observations, the feelings and emotions left off the page.

Structurally, the novel works well in connecting the four pivotal characters. Whilst Sadako’s connection to Mai is slim, her voice is perhaps the most colourful and layered, her story offering insight into Mai’s husband that the other perspectives don’t venture into. Each character experiences some form of loneliness and isolation in their lives, and their interactions with others offer reprieve and motivation to understand more about what they’re experiencing.

“For a brief moment, I wonder if I can tell Hiromi Sato that I am worried for reasons I cannot quite name, that fears and harsh thoughts about my life seem to follow me. I wonder if I can tell her about my attempts to go to Takayama, in Gifu Prefecture, and how I failed in this.”

Naturally with a novel that follows four different characters, there are going to be some you resonate with more. Personally, I thought Mai and Sadako were the most compelling characters with the most interesting character arcs. Unfortunately, I cared very little for Hiromi or Hiraku and found myself skimming their sections.

Outside of this, I quite enjoyed the novel and found it flowed with ease. It’s not overly long, so could be read rather quickly.

“Sadako started to form a mental image of this woman, of the apartment where she and J lived in Nagoya, a city she had never seen, and of the life they lived there together. Often J would complain about something his wife had specifically failed to do, some interaction she was guilty of…”

Recommended for literary readers, and those drawn to short stories or novellas. Readership skews female 30+

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Shut Ins
Katherine Brabon
July 2021
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers