Title: Darling Girls Author: Sally Hepworth Publisher: St. Martin’s Press Publication date: April 23, 2024 Length: 368 pages Genre: Thriller Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley (also won a copy in a Goodreads giveaway) Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
SISTERS, SECRETS, LOVE, AND MURDER… Sally Hepworth’s new novel has it all.
For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life.
But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?
A thrilling page-turner of sisterhood, secrets, love, and murder by New York Times bestselling author Sally Hepworth.
If you’ve read any books by Sally Hepworth, you know to expect twists, turns, and then even more twists. Darling Girls delivers them all, and packs in plenty of complex relationships and emotions as well.
In Darling Girls, we meet Jessica, Alicia, and Norah — a chosen family of sisters who came together through traumatic years as foster children. Despite the terrible experiences they endured as young teens, their relationship has been the bedrock of their years since then. Now adults, they’re all dysfunctional in different ways, but their sister bonds are the one constant that keeps them grounded.
When bones are found under the demolished home where they once lived, they’re summoned back to the town of Port Agatha to give statements to the police. What actually happened at Wild Meadows? Whose bones could they be? And are the sisters witnesses or suspects?
Through flashback chapters, we learn more about their childhood. Jessica was the first to be fostered with Miss Fairchild, a seemingly lovely woman whose farmhouse and grounds appear to be ideal for a small child. And at first, everything is perfect. Miss Fairchild dotes on Jessica, encourages her to call her “Mummy”, and never wants them to be apart. There are downsides, of course: When Jessica begins attending school and talking about new friends, she’s quickly shut down. No one is allowed to replace Mummy as the center of Jessica’s life.
Years later, when Miss Fairchild also takes in Norah and Alicia, Jessica’s world is abruptly changed yet again, as she’s reprimanded, punished, and pushed aside. But Miss Fairchild’s iron control is slipping — she hadn’t anticipated the girls’ bond or that they might start to question her rules and her methods.
It’s best not to know much more than that when reading Darling Girls. The characters are quite interesting — the sisters all have lasting scars from their years in the foster system, and their trauma manifests in different ways. The depiction feels realistic, and it’s sad and scary to read. At the same time, the chosen family is beautiful in its own way, and I loved seeing the unwavering support that Jessica, Norah, and Alicia provide to one another.
Being a Sally Hepworth book, I knew to expect to have my expectations up-ended, and that’s exactly what happened. I’m not a frequent thriller reader, but diving in every once in a while and going along for the roller coaster ride is quite fun.
As with all books by this author, Darling Girls is immersive and impossible to put down. It made me think, it gave me a few chills along the way, and it definitely kept me on my toes. Check it out!
This was originally going to be a book review post dedicated to my newest Classics Club Spin book… but then I got carried away! Not only did I read the book, but I also watched the movie and TV mini-series versions as well. Read on for my thoughts on all three (or, for the tl;dr version, jump right to the end!)
Let’s start where all such things should start — the book:
Title: Picnic at Hanging Rock Author: Joan Lindsay Publication date: 1967 Length: 204 pages Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Synopsis (Goodreads):
It was a cloudless summer day in the year 1900. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of the secluded volcanic outcropping. Farther, higher, until at last they disappeared. They never returned. . . .
Mysterious and subtly erotic, Picnic at Hanging Rock inspired the iconic 1975 film of the same name by Peter Weir. A beguiling landmark of Australian literature, it stands with Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides as a masterpiece of intrigue.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is my most recent Classics Club Spin book. This is a book I’ve had my eye on for some time, so I was delighted when its number came up!
This 20th century Australian classic centers around the Appleyard College for Young Ladies, run by headmistress Mrs. Appleyard, a stiff and proper Englishwoman who enjoys the income afforded her by providing a fine finishing school education for the daughters of Australian society’s affluent families.
As the story opens, it’s Valentine’s Day, 1900, and the young women of Appleyard are setting out on a picnic, chaperoned by two teachers. It’s a hot day, and their destination lies hours away by horse-drawn carriage. After the excitement of receiving Valentine’s cards, emotions are running high. The girls are eager for adventure, yet must always remember the expectation that they behave like proper young ladies.
After a picnic at the foot of the towering Hanging Rock, as it’s almost time for the return journey, a few girls beg permission to take a short walk along the stream… and never return. Hours pass; finally, one of the party returns in terror, but with no explanation of what’s actually happened. No sign can be found of the three missing girls, and what’s more, it’s discovered that one of the teachers has also vanished. As night approaches, there’s no choice but to return to the school.
An intense manhunt follows, and while one girl is eventually found — but again, with no memories of what happened to her or the others — there’s no luck in finding the others. Rumors and intrigue spread; the incident becomes known as the College Mystery. Months pass, and the ripples of that fateful day spread and touch more and more people — and the enigmatic Mrs. Appleyard seems to slowly fall apart as well.
The writing in Picnic at Hanging Rock is lush and vivid. The depiction of Hanging Rock is stark, and the author carefully describes not just the rock formations themselves, but all the flora and fauna of the area as well. The contrast between the proper, buttoned-up, virginal girls and the wildness of their environment is vivid — while providing a simulated British boarding school environment, the school cannot help but also expose the girls to the dangerous, venomous, and treacherous landscapes all around them.
This book is quite famous for not actually answering the questions it raises. This isn’t a whodunnit with a big reveal at the end. We don’t know, and never find out, what truly happened to the missing girls. There’s another large question at the end that also doesn’t get answered. People appear in the story, and then fade from it, with the author pointing out at various points that this is where so-and-so’s role ends, and we hear no more from them.
A modern-day reader used to fast-paced thrillers and explosive plot twists might find this book slow, but I actually loved it. The mood builds slowly yet inexorably. There’s intrigue and dread, yet we also gets views of love and passion, disappointments and escapes, jealousies and fears. There’s an insidious sense of doom — from the day of the picnic, everything begins going downhill, even when the connections aren’t obvious.
There’s much debate about what happened to the girls. Were they attacked, murdered, kidnapped? Simply lost, perhaps fallen down a cliff? Were supernatural elements at play? An unpublished final chapter holds the key to the author’s original explanation, but even after reading about it, I think I’m happier with the book not providing answers to the mysteries.
I’m glad to have read Picnic at Hanging Rock. It’s a tautly-written, fairly short novel that contains great writing and creates an eerie, aching mood. Highly recommended.
Next up, the first filmed version of Picnic at Hanging Rock:
Right after finishing the book, I watched the 1975 film by director Peter Weir, which is considered a movie masterpiece. At the time of its release, Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote:
HORROR need not always be a long-fanged gentleman in evening clothes or a dismembered corpse or a doctor who keeps a brain in his gold fish bowl. It may be a warm sunny day. the innocence of girlhood and hints of unexplored sexuality that combine to produce a euphoria so intense it becomes transporting, a state beyond life or death. Such horror is unspeakable not because it is gruesome but because it remains outside the realm of things that can be easily defined or explained in conventional ways.
Read full review, here, and an opinion piece written in 2017, here.
The movie delivers on the mood of the book, from start to finish. It’s cinematic in scope and has a dreamlike quality, often focusing in on the girls’ faces, showing their beauty and their overpowering emotions. Emotion rules everything — the girls’ romantic passion while reading Valentine cards, the devotion of a younger girl to an older, the delight of peeling off gloves and shoes as soon as civilizing forces are left behind, and for the young men encountered at the picnic, the obsessive dreams that follow a mere glimpse of a girl of startling beauty.
We also clearly see the downside of these emotional states, as various group scenes turn hysterical or threatening, when heightened emotions turn the girls (or in another instance, local townsfolk) into menacing mobs.
The film captures the book’s contrasts between the British-style manners and rules of the school and the untamable nature of the Australian bush, with gorgeous shots of the girls in white dresses disappearing between stones or coming in contact with insects and lizards. There were times in the book where I couldn’t quite connect the physical descriptions of the landscape with an image in my mind, so seeing the settings in the movie was very powerful.
The movie is just as ambiguous as the book. There’s no attempt to provide answers or tie things up neatly. The point of the movie is the feelings it evokes.
Finally, my 2nd viewing experience — the 2018 mini-series, currently streaming on Prime Video.
This six-episode TV mini-series stars Natalie Dormer as the domineering headmistress Mrs. Appleyard. Based on the key art alone, it’s clear that this version is going for a very different vibe.
According to the Variety review:
Joan Lindsay’s much-acclaimed 1967 Australian novel “Picnic At Hanging Rock” has already resulted in one stunning adaptation — Peter Weir’s 1975 film of the same name — so a second attempt, this time a television series, may already feel unnecessary. But it doesn’t take long for writers Beatrix Christian and Alice Addison to make the case for their own 2018 “Picnic,” a darker, more mysterious, and extended version that manages to feel updated for our time while still keeping the original 1900 setting.
In “Picnic At Hanging Rock,” the central mystery is laid out immediately: Four young women — three students and their teacher — suddenly vanish on Valentine’s Day, 1900, while on a school picnic at, well, Hanging Rock. The base premise is familiar to fans of crime series, but this is no ordinary drama; it’s eerie and haunting. It’s less dreamy (a quality frequently ascribed to the film) and more of a nightmare that you’ll be eager to dive into.
(For an additional critical take on this mini-series, check out the New York Times review, here.)
Over the course of six episodes, the bones of the plot of Picnic at Hanging Rock remain intact, but the mini-series expands just about every element, creating backstories for many characters, envisioning heaps more romantic entanglements, and showing scenes of events at the Rock that are eerie and perhaps even intriguing, but that don’t ultimately add a whole lot to the story.
The key change, of course, is the character of Mrs. Appleyard. It’s evident early on that she is not what she seems. Rather than an older widowed Englishwoman focused on the profitability of turning out refined young women, here, she’s a scheming con artist posing as a wealthy, respectable woman — but we’re treated to her hidden Cockney accent early on, and through flashbacks, learn much more of her character.
The girls in her care are sympathetic, much more diverse than in the 1975 movie, and more explicitly curious about their own sexuality as well as the eroticism of the untamed world beyond the confines of the school. The cruelty and abuse are much more explicit here as well, and certain subplots and side characters are completely extraneous, either there as deliberate sensationalism or as plot padding.
The middle few episodes sag, and I had to restrain myself from fast-forwarding, but by the end, I did want to see the wrap-up and how it all plays out. The mini-series keeps some (but not all) of the ambiguity of the source material, but the heavy focus on Mrs. Appleyard makes many of the other elements fade into the background, and some of the romantic entanglements seem to serve no purpose other than distraction.
I suppose I’m glad to have watched the mini-series — to satisfy my curiosity and for the sake of completion — but I would have been perfectly fine without it too.
But don’t let me talk you out of checking it out! Here’s the trailer — see if it piques your interest:
Back to the Classics Club Spin:
Yes, I ventured far afield, not just reading my chosen book, but watching two different adaptations as well. And to wrap it all up, I’ll simply say:
THE BOOK: Haunting, eerie, ambiguous, beautiful
THE 1975 MOVIE: Dreamlike and artistic, maybe not suited to 21st century moviegoer tastes, but as an older film, it’s lovely to see. Even when the plot gets lost amidst the gorgeous cinematography, the spell of the movie makes it worthwhile.
THE 2018 MINI-SERIES: OK if you like this sort of thing. It’s all a bit of a muddle, dreamy in parts and then crossing over into a campier gothic feel. (Maybe I’m alone in this reaction — has anyone else seen it?)
The biggest takeaway: Picnic at Hanging Rock is definitely worth reading, and I’m so glad I did.
Title: The Soulmate Author: Sally Hepworth Publisher: St. Martin’s Press Publication date: April 4, 2023 Length: 336 pages Genre: Thriller Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Get ready for a thrilling, addictive novel about marriage, betrayal, and the secrets that push us to the edge in Sally Hepworth’s The Soulmate.
There’s a cottage on a cliff. Gabe and Pippa’s dream home in a sleepy coastal town. But their perfect house hides something sinister. The tall cliffs have become a popular spot for people to end their lives. Night after night Gabe comes to their rescue, literally talking them off the ledge. Until he doesn’t.
When Pippa discovers Gabe knew the victim, the questions spiral…Did the victim jump? Was she pushed?
And would Gabe, the love of Pippa’s life, her soulmate…lie? As the perfect facade of their marriage begins to crack, the deepest and darkest secrets begin to unravel.
I’ve read all but one of Sally Hepworth’s novels by now, and when I look back at my ratings and reviews, I can see that her books are either big hits for me (especially The Good Sister and The Things We Keep) or so-so reads that I could have done without. Sadly, The Soulmate falls into the latter category.
Content warning: Suicide is a recurring topic in this book, as are mental health concerns, diagnoses, and treatments.I would not recommend this book for readers for whom these topics might be triggering.
In The Soulmate, two different women narrate a dramatic occurrence, what happened before, and what happens next. Oddly, one of these two women is already dead when we meet her as a narrator, and she tells her side of the story from her afterlife.
Pippa lives with her gorgeous, wonderful husband Gabe in a cottage by a cliff’s edge. It’s a beautiful location, but with a downside — the cliff facing their home is known locally as The Drop, and it’s a spot that’s known for its number of suicides. Once they move in, Gabe keeps an eye on the cliff, and in the year they’ve been there, has managed to talk seven different people away from the edge with his calm, caring approach. He’s a local hero.
But everything changes when a woman on the cliff doesn’t step away. Pippa comforts Gabe, assuring him that he did all he could. But something nags at Pippa — what she saw and the way Gabe described it to police don’t quite match up.
The woman who died is Amanda, and she shares her story as well, going back to the early days of her own marriage. As the story progresses, we see how Amanda and her husband Max are connected to Pippa and Gabe. There are dark secrets, and clearly there’s more to Amanda’s death than meets the eye.
I found the characters very hard to relate to or even care about. Pippa is the only decent one in the mix, although Amanda isn’t a bad person necessarily — but she does allow herself to turn a blind eye to all sorts of shady and criminal business dealings and enjoy the lifestyle funded by Max’s success.
The more we learn, the harder it is to fathom why Pippa would remain in her marriage, and it’s frustrating to see how her protective parents and sister wait until much too late to actually share with her what they observe.
The twists and turns in the plot felt like cheap shock devices to me, and the big reveal at the end did not satisfy me. Being vague here, but a fact that should have been redemptive doesn’t override the fact that some of these people did or were responsible for awful things.
I’m not typically a reader of thrillers, but once in a while, if the plot twists are new and surprising, the writing is great, and the characters can make me care, I’ll find myself enjoying them. Sadly, that isn’t the case here. Even the writing has some strange, jagged edges. For example, when Pippa is asked whether her two little girls are twins, she replies that they’re “Irish twins […] born less than a year apart”. Maybe it’s me, but I’ve never heard that phrase before, and there’s no reason for it — it feels derogatory, and a weird way to describe one’s own children.
Pippa is a lawyer, clearly very intelligent, yet she acts as if she has no clue about many things, including Gabe’s business dealings:
I never asked too many questions about his work. The truth was, I had only the most rudimentary understanding of what Gabe did, and when he talked about it I understood less rather than more.
Then there’s the whole issue of Amanda’s narration from the great beyond. It’s weird and off-putting; at the end she states that after death, she could now see “the whole scene unfurl” regarding events she hadn’t known prior to death — so death makes someone omniscient? Such a strange way to reveal backstory and secrets.
The Soulmate tries, I think, to illustrate deep truths about marriage, trust, and fidelity, but on the whole, it misses the mark. Yes, the book held my attention, but I felt that there were too many false notes and much too much obliviousness to make any of it believable.
I’ve given The Soulmate 3-stars, but that may be overly generous. It’s a quick, compelling read, but at the end of the day, I found it unsatisfying.
Earlier this week, I shared a post with my list of books for the newest Classics Club Spin challenge (see it here), and today, this spin’s number was announced. (For those keeping track, it’s CC Spin #33, and for me personally, #5!)
Hosted by The Classics Club blog, the Classics Club Spin is a reading adventure where participants come up with a list of classics they’d like to read, number them 1 to 20, and then read the book that corresponds to the “spin” number that comes up.
For CCSpin #33, the lucky number is:
And that means I’ll be reading:
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (published 1967)
Synopsis:
It was a cloudless summer day in the year 1900. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of the secluded volcanic outcropping. Farther, higher, until at last they disappeared. They never returned. . . .
Mysterious and subtly erotic, Picnic at Hanging Rock inspired the iconic 1975 film of the same name by Peter Weir. A beguiling landmark of Australian literature, it stands with Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides as a masterpiece of intrigue.
I’m so happy with this spin result! I haven’t read many Australian classics, and this is one that I’ve heard so much about over the years. And on a practical note, I was afraid that we’d land on one of my longer options this time — but this book is 204 pages (according to the edition in my Kindle library), and feels really doable!
What do you think of my newest spin book?
Here’s my list of 20 titles for Classics Club Spin #33:
Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne DuMaurier
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Peony by Pearl Buck
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Howards End by E. M. Forster
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
Title: The Younger Wife Author: Sally Hepworth Publisher: St. Martin’s Press Publication date: April 5, 2022 Length: 352 pages Genre: Thriller/contemporary fiction Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
THE HUSBAND
A heart surgeon at the top of his field, Stephen Aston is getting married again. But first he must divorce his current wife, even though she can no longer speak for herself.
THE DAUGHTERS
Tully and Rachel Aston look upon their father’s fiancée, Heather, as nothing but an interloper. Heather is younger than both of them. Clearly, she’s after their father’s money.
THE FORMER WIFE
With their mother in a precarious position, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family’s secrets, the new wife closing in, and who their father really is.
THE YOUNGER WIFE
Heather has secrets of her own. Will getting to the truth unleash the most dangerous impulses in all of them?
I could not put this book down… and yet now that I’m done, I really don’t know what to think!
As the book opens, we’re at the wedding of Stephen and Heather. They make a beautiful couple, and everyone is so pleased that Stephen has found love again after going through the pain of his former wife’s slide into dementia. And how lovely that he thought to include his ex-wife in this special day! But after the vows, something goes wrong in the next room. There’s blood and an ambulance…
And that’s just the prologue!
From there, we go back some months to Heather’s first meeting with Stephen’s adult daughters, Tully and Rachel. Heather is actually younger than both of them, and they’re prepared to hate her. They’re none too pleased with their father either, but they’re trying to be supportive. He’s done right by their mother, finding her a good nursing home and excellent care, making sure there’s no worry about finances… so why shouldn’t he have the opportunity for love once again?
As the story unfolds, we get chapters from Tully, Rachel, and Heather’s perspectives. No one’s life is as perfect as it seems. Rachel, a magnificent baker, has been dealing with a trauma from her teens for almost 20 years. Tully, a suburban wife and mother, has anxiety through the roof and very unhealthy coping mechanisms. And Heather certainly has not shared the true story of her family’s sordid past.
Each of the three women evokes sympathy in her own way. For Tully and Rachel, they’re dealing not only with issues from their pasts, but also grieving the loss of a beloved mother, mourning a bit more with each visit to the nursing home and the realization that the woman who was so central to their lives has slipped away from them bit by bit. Heather’s childhood was awful, but she’s built a fresh start for herself, even as the occasional doubts about her perfect new life creep in.
It’s hard to say much without giving away key spoilers, so I’ll proceed with caution. As I mentioned, I simply couldn’t put this book down, and finished it over two days of intense reading. Not that that’s surprising — Sally Hepworth’s book always bring out the compulsive reader in me! With short, sharp chapters and fascinating POV characters, The Younger Wife sucked me in from page 1 and just never let me go.
And yet… I felt oddly flat after the end. I really and truly can’t say more, but the resolution left me confused and weirdly disappointed. I need to go back and poke around in earlier chapters to see if I missed anything and reexamine how the pieces fit together.
Do I recommend this book? Yes, but perhaps with tempered expectations. Sally Hepworth is a terrific teller of tales, and she creates fascinating, memorable characters. The Younger Wife did not move and engage my emotions the way The Good Sister did, but that’s a very high mark to meet.
The Younger Wife is a fast page-turner, and I enjoyed the reading experience. Now I just need to think about that ending some more…
Sometimes fairy tales can come true–even for plain, shy spinsters like Missy Wright. Neither as pretty as cousin Alicia nor as domineering as mother Drusilla, she seems doomed to a quiet life of near poverty at Missalonghi, her family’s pitifully small homestead in Australia’s Blue Mountains. But it’s a brand new century–the twentieth–a time for new thoughts and bold new actions. And Missy Wright is about to set every self-righteous tongue in the town of Byron wagging. Because she has just set her sights on a mysterious, mistrusted, and unsuspecting stranger… who just might be Prince Charming in disguise.
After coming across a mention of The Ladies of Missalonghi online, I decided to give it a try once I saw the audiobook available via my library. This short book is enjoyable in many ways, but it also shows its age a bit, and has a troubling reputation as well. (See my quibbles section below…)
Set in the early 1900s in a small town in Australia, The Ladies of Missalonghi focuses on the sad little family living in a run-down house named Missalonghi on the shabby side of town. The town of Byron is dominated by the Hurlingford family, who own pretty much all of the desirable land and every local business. The nasty truth of the family is that thanks to an edict from its founding father who first established Byron, only males in the family inherit financially, while women descendents get a house and five acres of land. However, the houses and land have become worse and worse over the generations, and Hurlingford women who don’t marry well, become widowed, or (gasp) remain spinsters are doomed to a life of poverty and dependence.
Main character Missy Wright lives with her widowed mother Drusilla and her elderly aunt Octavia, and the three eke out the barest of livings. Missy is considered plain and unmarriageable, long past whatever youthful prime she might have had. To economize, the women dress in brown (appropriate for any occasion, and it doesn’t show dirt), have a very fixed routine of household chores, and rely on the condescending patronage of their richer relatives for meager treats and hand-outs.
When Missy meets a rough-hewn stranger and learns that he’s bought land in the adjacent valley, her imagination takes off — especially thanks to the romantic novels the town’s new librarian has been sharing with her. After a mild health scare, Missy decides to take matters into her own hands, throw off the burden of obedience and family deference, and pursue a life of adventure and love… even if she has to scheme and lie to get it.
While engaging in many ways, I do need to point out a few quibbles:
SPOILERS AHEAD
As I mentioned earlier, the book’s age shows in some of the depictions and dialogue. I don’t have a problem with historical fiction portraying an era’s inherent sexual inequalities, hang-ups, class issues, etc, but I actually feel that this book smacks a little too heavily of the 1980s. Published in 1987, The Ladies of Missalonghi has a love interest who’s the stereotypical bad boy in many ways, coming out with statements and attitudes that just wouldn’t fly today… and in historical fiction written now, I think authors tend to make their heroes a little less sexist/asshole-ish. If that makes any sense.
BIG SPOILER: There’s a weird supernatural element that’s revealed toward the end that makes no sense at all, bringing a ghost into the mix in the strangest way possible, then using that ghost as the explanation for Missy’s pursuit of freedom. Seriously, I don’t get it at all. The ghost in question appears as a real person to Missy, and provides Missy with books, legal documents, a new dress and hat, and even comes to tea at Missalonghi, where she interacts with Drusilla and Octavia. Again… I don’t get it.
Finally, I need to point out the plagiarism allegations that plague this book, specifically, that Colleen McCullough basically took the plot of The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery, tweaked it a bit and moved it to Australia, and published it as her own. Colleen McCullough denied the allegations, but suggested that “subconscious recollection” was at play — that she must have read the book at some point and inadvertently incorporated elements without realizing where they’d come from. The stories track so closely (with key differences being that Missy’s mother is kind and loving, and that Missy knows that her health crisis isn’t real and lies to her love interest) that it’s impossible to believe that the similarities are purely accidental.
Having read The Blue Castle recently, the shared plot elements are very obvious — and I have to say, if I had to choose between the two books, The Blue Castle wins hands-down.
END OF SPOILERY QUIBBLES
All that aside, there’s plenty to like about The Ladies of Missalonghi. There are some clever twists as Missy begins to assert herself, including her scheming to undermine the terrible male relatives who neglect and cheat the vulnerable women of the family. The descriptions of the setting are lovely, and there are moments of clever dialogue and sly social digs that make it fun.
The audiobook is narrated by Davina Porter, known to Outlander fans as the wonderful narrator of all Outlander series audiobooks, and she’s always a treat to listen to.
Overall, I’m not sorry to have read The Ladies of Missalonghi and I enjoyed listening to it, but the troublesome aspects make it a hard book to truly love.
And I have to say, the whole “marriage due to a medical crisis that turns out to be false” plot is handled much better in The Blue Castle, as is so much else about the basics of the plot.
Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.
Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.
Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!
Not since “The Thorn Birds” has Colleen McCullough written a novel of such broad appeal about a family and the Australian experience as “The Touch.”At its center is Alexander Kinross, remembered as a young man in his native Scotland only as a shiftless boilermaker’s apprentice and a godless rebel. But when, years later, he writes from Australia to summon his bride, his Scottish relatives quickly realize that he has made a fortune in the gold fields and is now a man to be reckoned with.
Arriving in Sydney after a difficult voyage, the sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Drummond meets her husband-to-be and discovers to her dismay that he frightens and repels her. Offered no choice, she marries him and is whisked at once across a wild, uninhabited countryside to Alexander’s own town, named Kinross after himself. In the crags above it lies the world’s richest gold mine.
Isolated in Alexander’s great house, with no company save Chinese servants, Elizabeth finds that the intimacies of marriage do not prompt her husband to enlighten her about his past life — or even his present one. She has no idea that he still has a mistress, the sensual, tough, outspoken Ruby Costevan, whom Alexander has established in his town, nor that he has also made Ruby a partner in his company, rapidly expanding its interests far beyond gold. Ruby has a son, Lee, whose father is the head of the beleaguered Chinese community; the boy becomes dear to Alexander, who fosters his education as a gentleman.
Captured by the very different natures of Elizabeth and Ruby, Alexander resolves to have both of them. Why should he not? He has the fabled “Midas Touch” — a combination of curiosity, boldness and intelligence that he applies to every situation, and which fails him only when it comes to these two women.
Although Ruby loves Alexander desperately, Elizabeth does not. Elizabeth bears him two daughters: the brilliant Nell, so much like her father; and the beautiful, haunting Anna, who is to present her father with a torment out of which for once he cannot buy his way. Thwarted in his desire for a son, Alexander turns to Ruby’s boy as a possible heir to his empire, unaware that by keeping Lee with him, he is courting disaster.
The stories of the lives of Alexander, Elizabeth and Ruby are intermingled with those of a rich cast of characters, and, after many twists and turns, come to a stunning and shocking climax. Like “The Thorn Birds,” Colleen McCullough’s new novel is at once a love story and a family saga, replete with tragedy, pathos, history and passion. As few other novelists can, she conveys a sense of place: the desperate need of her characters, men and women, rootless in a strange land, to create new beginnings.
How and when I got it:
I’ve had a battered paperback on my shelf for years — I don’t remember specifically buying this book, but I’m guessing it came from a library sale at some point in the last 10 years.
Why I want to read it:
I’m sure I picked this book up solely based on the fact that it’s by Colleen McCullough. I will never forget the experience of reading The Thorn Birds for the first time! Since then, I’ve only read one other book by her, but once again, I was impressed by her ability to bring Australia to life on the page and to create such dynamic characters and epic plots.
In terms of The Touch, it sounds grand and sweeping and tragic — just how I like my historical fiction! I’m glad I just stumbled across my copy while reorganizing my shelves. It was a good reminder that (a) I own this book and (b) I do intend to read it!
The only other book I’ve read by Colleen McCullough is Morgan’s Run (published in 2000), but I’d welcome other recommendations!
Title: The Good Sister Author: Sally Hepworth Publisher: St. Martin’s Press Publication date: April 13, 2021 Length: 320 pages Genre: Thriller Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
From the outside, everyone might think Fern and Rose are as close as twin sisters can be: Rose is the responsible one and Fern is the quirky one. But the sisters are devoted to one another and Rose has always been Fern’s protector from the time they were small.
Fern needed protecting because their mother was a true sociopath who hid her true nature from the world, and only Rose could see it. Fern always saw the good in everyone. Years ago, Fern did something very, very bad. And Rose has never told a soul. When Fern decides to help her sister achieve her heart’s desire of having a baby, Rose realizes with growing horror that Fern might make choices that can only have a terrible outcome. What Rose doesn’t realize is that Fern is growing more and more aware of the secrets Rose, herself, is keeping. And that their mother might have the last word after all.
I have not been disappointed in a Sally Hepworth book yet, and The Good Sister is no exception! Talk about a page-turner! I couldn’t put the book down, and finished this compelling story in one day.
Rose and Fern are adult sisters who’ve only had each other to rely on for as long as they can remember. Rose is calm and responsible and protective; Fern has sensory issues and struggles to understand the nuances of interpersonal communications, completing missing nonvisual cues and unable to take words as anything but literal.
When Rose shares with Fern her heartache over infertility, Fern decides to have a baby for Rose. And when she meets a sweet guy at the library where she works, Fern realizes that he’s a good candidate for the baby’s father.
Things don’t always go as expected, and as Fern becomes attached to the man she calls Wally, Rose becomes uneasy about the relationship and the feeling that Fern is pulling away from her.
Man, this book is hard to talk about without entering spoiler territory!
Told through Rose’s diary entries and Fern’s first-person narration, we learn bits and pieces about the sisters’ bond, their painful childhood, and their memories of their mother. We also learn more about why and how Fern became so dependent on Rose, and why neither of them consider Fern to be reliable or trustworthy.
It’s only as we get deeper into the story that we start to realize that neither sister is telling the whole story, and that what we’re hearing might not be the true picture of certain key events. Puzzling out the pieces and figuring out what’s true and what’s a lie makes this an incredibly engrossing read.
I especially loved Fern’s character. She’s unusual and has certain needs when it comes to interacting with the world, but she’s also very loving in her own odd way. And hey, she’s a librarian! And a really great one — despite her outward prickliness and tendency to ignore people who ask for help with the library photocopier, she’s terrific at helping people find what they need, whether it’s the right book or a bit of distraction, a way to calm down or even just some basic toiletries so they can use the public showers.
The plot of The Good Sister has some very clever twists and turns, and honestly, I just could not stop reading once I started. I won’t say more about the story, because it’s just too much fun to experience it without advance clues or information. Sally Hepworth has written yet another engrossing story with memorable characters, and I heartily enjoyed it. Don’t miss The Good Sister!
Title: The Exiles Author: Christina Baker Kline Narrator: Caroline Lee Publisher: Custom House Publication date: August 24, 2020 Print length: 370 pages Audio length: 10 hours 17 minutes Genre: Historical fiction Source: Purchased Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train returns with an ambitious, emotionally resonant novel that captures the hardship, oppression, opportunity and hope of a trio of women’s lives in nineteenth-century Australia.
Seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to “the land beyond the seas,” Van Diemen’s Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land.
During the journey on a repurposed slave ship, the Medea, Evangeline strikes up a friendship with Hazel, a girl little older than her former pupils who was sentenced to seven years transport for stealing a silver spoon. Canny where Evangeline is guileless, Hazel — a skilled midwife and herbalist – is soon offering home remedies to both prisoners and sailors in return for a variety of favors.
Though Australia has been home to Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years, the British government in the 1840s considers its fledgling colony uninhabited and unsettled, and views the natives as an unpleasant nuisance. By the time the Medea arrives, many of them have been forcibly relocated, their land seized by white colonists. One of these relocated people is Mathinna, the orphaned daughter of the Chief of the Lowreenne tribe, who has been adopted by the new governor of Van Diemen’s Land.
In this gorgeous novel, Christina Baker Kline brilliantly recreates the beginnings of a new society in a beautiful and challenging land, telling the story of Australia from a fresh perspective, through the experiences of Evangeline, Hazel, and Mathinna. While life in Australia is punishing and often brutally unfair, it is also, for some, an opportunity: for redemption, for a new way of life, for unimagined freedom. Told in exquisite detail and incisive prose, The Exiles is a story of grace born from hardship, the unbreakable bonds of female friendships, and the unfettering of legacy.
It’s been a few days since I finished listening to this fascinating, moving, and well-written story, and I feel like I’m still catching my breath.
In The Exiles, author Christina Baker Kline tells a powerful story of women displaced by the rules of others, struggling to survive and to find a place to call home. While the story is uplifting, it’s often so heartbreaking that it made me want to stop and sit quietly for a while to regroup and get my emotions under control.
The book starts by focusing on two very different characters: First, we meet Mathinna. At the opening of the story, she’s eight years old, already living in a sort of exile along with her tribe, who’ve been removed from their lands and forced to relocate to the harsher landscape of Flinders Island. Even there, their lives aren’t peaceful. They’re ruled by British governors, forced to adopt English speech and dress, and limited in their abilities to live as their people always have. When young Mathinna catches the visiting governor’s wife’s attention during a schoolchildren’s performance, Mrs. Franklin decides that Mathinna will be her next experiment. With no consent needed, Governor and Mrs. Franklin leave instruction for Mathinna to be brought to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), to be raised in their home as a test subject — to see if “savages” can be civilized enough to fit into proper society.
At the same time, back in London, we meet Evangeline Stokes, the inexperienced, orphaned daughter of a vicar, who seeks work as a governess with a wealthy family in order to survive after her father’s death. Evangeline is seduced and impregnated by the elder son of the family which employs her, and after she’s found with his ring in her possession, she’s arrested and imprisoned. (He, of course, is such a cad that he never lifts a finger to help her.)
Evangeline is sentenced to transportation, and begins the harrowing four-month sea voyage from England to Australia. To survive, she forges friendships with some of the other women convicts, but the voyage itself is dangerous, as are some of the crewmen onboard the ship.
During the voyage, the character Hazel is introduced as well — a teen girl convicted of robbery, after her alcoholic mother sent her out to pickpocket for their survival. Hazel is a trained and gifted midwife, and her skills become invaluable to Evangeline and the other women on the ship, as well as providing Hazel with a way to improve her own life once she arrives in Van Diemen’s land.
The relationships among the women are complex and important. While their backgrounds vary widely, all find themselves at the mercy of an unfair justice system that deprives them of their voices and their freedoms. As becomes very clear, poor and powerless women have no one to defend them, and no ability to contest or avoid the judgments handed down against them. And as one woman points out to Evangeline, it’s not just about punishment — as British colonizes the Australian territory, they need more women to build a society with, so why not solve two problems at once?
The story alternates in sections between the experiences of Evangeline, Hazel, and the other convicts, and the strange and awful half-life Mathinna is forced into. Again, here is a young woman with no voice and no power, treated as an object of curiosity and a plaything, but all too easily cast aside when her novelty wears off.
All of these women truly are exiles, removed from their homes and families, given no choice about where they’ll go or how they’ll live, forced to give up everything they’ve known and start over in a foreign land. In Mathinna’s case, of course, it’s not just the story of a personal tragedy but the tragedy of a people, as British colonization decimates the lives of the native people of Australia.
The Exiles is a beautiful and powerful read. I don’t want to talk too much about the individual characters and what becomes of them, because the specific storylines are best discovered by reading the book. Overall, this is a tragic and lovely story, and it left me wanting to learn more about the actual history of Australian settlement.
Title: The Dry Author: Jane Harper Publisher: Flatiron Books Publication date: May 31, 2016 Length: 328 pages Genre: Crime fiction Source: Purchased Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
A small town hides big secrets in this atmospheric, page-turning debut mystery by award-winning author Jane Harper.
In the grip of the worst drought in a century, the farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily when three members of a local family are found brutally slain.
Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk reluctantly returns to his hometown for the funeral of his childhood friend, loath to face the townsfolk who turned their backs on him twenty years earlier.
But as questions mount, Falk is forced to probe deeper into the deaths of the Hadler family. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret. A secret Falk thought was long buried. A secret Luke’s death now threatens to bring to the surface in this small Australian town, as old wounds bleed into new ones.
The Dry is a twisty tale of murder and secrets set in a rural Australian community, where drought has dried up farms and rivers and brought the entire town to the brink of natural and economic ruin.
Federal Investigator Aaron Falk is drawn back into the web of gossip and lies in the town of Kiewarra when he returns home for a funeral — the funeral of his former best friend, who appears to have slaughtered his wife and son before turning the shotgun on himself. It’s horrifying and ugly, and the town is roiling with unhappiness.
At the same time, Aaron’s reception by the town is hostile. Twenty years earlier, he was suspected of murdering a classmate and was forced to flee with his father in the face of threats and aggression. The people of Kiewarra have a long memory, and no one — especially the dead girl’s family — wants to see him back among them.
But Aaron and the local police officer both believe something is off about the deaths of Luke’s family. Something about the crime scene just doesn’t add up, so Aaron stays to help pick through the witness statements and other bits and pieces of clues. Meanwhile, his memories of the events of 20 years earlier are coming back strongly, and he’s finding himself plagued by that unsolved mystery as well.
I was very caught up in the story of The Dry and just could not stop reading! The murder itself is gruesome and terrible, and it’s shocking to see how the different pieces fit together. Aaron is an impressive main character, smart and determined, but also flawed and haunted by his past and his regrets.
It was fascinating to get a view of the small-town politics and power plays, and I found the description of the drought-ridden environment and its dangers really powerful. Who knew that a scene with a lighter in it could be quite so scary?
I’m rating this book 3 1/2 stars, because I did enjoy it quite a bit, but also felt certain pieces of the mystery were a little on the obvious side. Given that I don’t normally gravitate toward crime stories, I was surprised that I liked The Dry as much as I did!
In fact, I think at some point I’ll want to read more of this author’s work — my book group friends recommend her books highly! **Save
Bookshelf Fantasies 