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| Name : | Meredith J. |
My Reviews
In 1961, sixteen-year-old Laurel is hiding in the tree house daydreaming about Billy Baxter instead of joining her family to celebrate her little brother’s birthday. Her mother Dorothy, Dolly, has forgotten the knife, the one they always use to cut birthday cakes, but before Laurel has a chance to climb down and fetch it for her mother, Dorothy walks up the path carrying baby Gerald. What happens next is shocking and the truth of it will remain a secret until the day Dorothy dies. As Dorothy is inside fetching the knife, a stranger walks up the path towards the house. Dorothy leaves the house with the knife in her hand. Upon seeing the stranger, she places the toddler on the ground and plunges the knife deep into the man’s chest. The man falls and dies where he lies and Laurel sees the whole thing, including the look of fear and panic on her mother’s face.
The police determine the stranger must be the picnic stalker terrorizing the local area or a burglary gone wrong and the case goes quietly away. Laurel and her mother never speak of the incident again but in 2011, as Dorothy lies dying, her mind travels back the past and she talks of second chances, Jimmy and Vivien. None of Laurel’s sisters know what or who she is talking about but Laurel has never forgotten the look of fear on her mother’s face as the stranger approached. She knows that her mother must have known the man she killed and determined to uncover the truth about her mother’s past, Laurel starts with the one identity she does know, the name of the murdered man.
Kate Morton is such a gifted storyteller. She fills your head with luscious details of history inhabited by characters who are as flawed as they are fascinating and then just when you begin wondering how she will resolve her story, what possible surprises can there be, Morton sideswipes you with the resolution. Her mysteries are part vintage Agatha Christie and so very Daphne Du Maurier. The romance is as large as a Greta Garbo movie and the history is meticulously researched. The Secret Keep
Lizzie Quealy has every reason to be happy. In Jim she has the kind of partner every woman envies (the ones who do their fair share of housework and child rearing) she has two gorgeous children, a successful career, a best friend and below average money worries. In fact, happiness is a subject close to Lizzie’s heart, a subject she has researched in depth for her stand up comedy show and has now been contracted by the BBC to turn into a television series. Travelling to London for pre- production meetings throws Lizzie in the path of an old flame, Tom. Now very much married, with his own perfect wife, lovely child and successful career, neither are prepared for the tumultuous emotions that overwhelm them on meeting again.
“Virtue never tested is no virtue at all.” says Billy Bragg, liberally quoted throughout the novel, and with eyes open wide, Lizzie allows her feelings for Tom to takeover, risking all the happiness she already has for the chance of another kind of happiness.
There are many things that are clever and entertaining about this novel. Deveny captures the awkward teenage years of 1980s Melbourne with the clarity of remembering only a Gen X can. Dialogue is whip-smart and the story crackles along at a fair clip. Sex is lusty, if somewhat anatomical, but perhaps that’s a reflection on Lizzie’s character rather than a stylistic issue. What makes this novel shine though is the exploration of its core theme of happiness. It is such a big concept with so many ways of looking at it but via Lizzie and her best friend Jules, Deveny engages in a wide-ranging discussion on the many factors that influence individual happiness and the price happiness, or even the quest for happiness, can extract.
Deveny’s style smacks you in the face with reality one minute and then mulls over the meaning of life the next. But what she does incredibly well in writing about love, happiness and marriage and all those complicated questions that pursue all of us in life, is make you think about what it means to be happy. The Happiness
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