The Midnight Estate by Kelly Rimmer

 

The Midnight Estate is Kelly Rimmer’s latest thoughtful, powerful, straight-to-the-heart novel. When Fiona, a successful Sydney architect, suddenly finds her world turned upside down, she decides to move back into the home where she was born and raised. Wurrimbirra is a huge old mansion on a property outside of Forbes, a town in the central west of New South Wales.

While cleaning out the old house in an attempt to make it liveable again Fiona finds a book, written by her late, beloved uncle Tad, an internationally successful author who had shared Fiona’s upbringing with her mother, Ginny. Fiona becomes engrossed in the book which is set just one generation ago.

Kelly Rimmer digs deep into the thoughts and feelings of her characters and how they relate to events in their lives. Here she returns to domestic violence, specifically coercive control, a much watered down form of which is these days being called ‘gaslighting’, referencing the old Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer movie, Gaslight. Physical or psychological, it is still domestic violence and can still lead to disastrous consequences. I live near Forbes, and a recent horrific tragedy there highlighted not only domestic violence but also our criminally inadequate bail laws. It is a crime which is at last being acknowledged but that acknowledgment still has a long way to go.

This compulsively readable book contains danger, suspense, tragedy, but also love and hopefulness. It is a story within a story and as such explains the past much more convincingly than face to face conversations ever could have.

And animals (in this case, cats) always make a good story perfect, of course.

Published by Hachette Australia 

One Small Mistake by Dandy Smith

This book is a stunner! When the book opens. Elodie Fray is a young woman who has given up her successful career in marketing, is working shifts in a cafe and living in low rent digs in order to concentrate on trying to get her first novel published. 

Without even fully realising it, Elodie tells a lie, the repercussions from which spread and grow out of her control. When she turns to Jack, her oldest and dearest friend, Jack comes up with a plan to get her out of the mess she has gotten herself into. Elodie agrees to go along with Jack’s plan, completely unaware that she is about to get into a hugely bigger mess, of danger and terror she couldn’t have imagined. This is absolutely heart stopping stuff that kept me up all night.

While Elodie is telling her story, her sister Ada tells hers, in every alternating chapter. The two sisters have been virtually estranged, but Elodie is missing, and while Ada is torturing herself with fears of what might have happened to Elodie, she examines the relationship between the two of them and how her life has reached its present state. Ada’s chapters are all letters she is writing to Elodie, in the hope that Elodie will get to read them. Dandy Smith’s writing of this is nothing short of brilliant.

While not wanting to give too much away, I hope I’ve given away enough to encourage lots of people to read this terrific book. Thank you NetGalley for my ARC.

Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

A Mother’s Confession by Kelly Rimmer

 

Of all of Kelly Rimmer’s books I have read, A Mother’s Confession has been the most powerful.

I usually think I know which way a book is going and I can guess how it is going to end. This one, however, has a built in mystery right from the start. The story is being told in present time, in alternating chapters, by Olivia and her mother-in-law, Ivy.  Kelly’s psychological analysis of Ivy is masterful. Olivia is married to Ivy’s son, David, and she and Ivy tell their separate stories of how their lives have reached the point they have come to now.

Because a version of the ending is revealed at the start of the book, it can only be read with a feeling of mounting dread but it is impossible to put the book down until the full story is revealed. Okay, I was quite able to continue with that, until towards the end the goose bumps started creeping up my spine, followed by actual shivering and finally unstoppable tears. Kelly Rimmer is a literary genius. She has knowledge, compassion and insight into the human condition and is able to express it all in her writing.

The worst aspect of domestic violence is the hold, like an invisible chain, the perpetrator has on the victim which outsiders are unable to understand, or, in many cases, break. I’ve only been an outsider looking in to someone’s suffering from mental, not physical abuse but just as seemingly inescapable.

Just brilliant, Kelly.

Published by Bookouture.