with Jan Deane
How would you react to the news that a long-admired uncle, who was the apple of the eye of the grandmother who raised you, had established a new life in England after his wife and children died in mysterious circumstances?
This is the scenario facing Jess, the central character in Homecoming, the latest novel by international bestselling author Kate Morton.
Jess herself has been living in England when she is called back home to Australia urgently because her grandmother has been critically injured in a fall.
Kate Morton uses this plot and the settings of London and the Adelaide Hills as tools, as she see-saws between the present day and the time more than 60 years previously, when a mother is blamed for the poisoning deaths of her children and herself.
Jess is gobsmacked to find that the murder mystery was widely reported at the time, was the subject of a book, and the details could be accessed online.
Why had no-one told Jess? And why had her grandmother never referred in any detail to her uncle’s wife, Isobel Turner?
Kate Morton’s writing is outstanding as she fleshes out the characters, especially Isobel.
Here’s a woman who grew up in London, was a botanist, who meets her husband-to-be, John Turner, on a bridge one day when he stops her to ask for directions.
They have a whirlwind courtship and before she knows it, Isobel is the mistress of a household in the Adelaide Hills and becomes mother to four children.
The morning of Isobel’s last day is described in detail as you walk around her garden and veggie patch with her.
You can see Isobel’s garden, you can smell the flowers and feel her pleasure as she quietly begins her day drinking her tea from a Limoges China cup, before the household clatter gets under way.
The comparison between the lot of a woman raising a family in country Australia in the 1950s, and that of Jess, who is every inch the modern woman, is stark and revealing.
My, how things have changed in that time frame, which is similar to my own.
The cover of Homecoming also deserves a mention. It’s an original painting with truly beautiful colours and Australian flora and fauna.
Homecoming by Kate Morton.
Published by Allen & Unwin.