Legend Press, August 15, 2016.
Five Stars
In the 1980s, Lily receives an invitation to an art
retrospective from a childhood friend, and it brings back all of her
conflicting memories of growing up in 1930s Melbourne. Lily’s passionate
friendship with Eva Trentham allowed her entrance into the family’s bohemian
lifestyle, led by Eva’s father. The infamous modernist painter, Evan, his wife
and their three daughters, live in a rambling old farmhouse with several other
artists, building their dream of a creative utopian commune. Lily becomes
wrapped up in their world, but it is a fantasy that cannot last.
Young Lily fell in love with the entire Trentham
family and their eccentric lifestyle, and she wants to completely immerse
herself in it. When her own family experiences tragedy, Lily gets her wish to
stay temporarily with the Trenthams. She is a part of their alcohol and drug fueled
parties, as well as the intimate moments between members of the commune. The
adults around her are making careless and even dangerous decisions, but it is
Lily and the other girls who will pay the price.
This is a story about the compromise between creative
ambition and family life, in which conflicted loyalties will be exposed and
difficult choices must be made. The young girls are treated with a level of
maturity that they are not mentally prepared for, and it leads them to make
adult decisions that their young minds cannot handle. The older Lily, a wife
and mother herself, still regrets the decisions she made as a child – she was
expected to know better, but she was much too young to understand the far-reaching
consequences of her choices.
The setting of the Trentham house is pastoral and
nostalgic – it has a youthful simplicity that Lily wishes she could return to,
but beneath the façade lay obsessions and secrets. The bohemian idyll, seen
especially through the passionate intensity of childhood, is unsustainable. The
mystery behind Lily’s story is compelling, but it is also somewhat comfortable
because we know that Lily survives her past as she looks back to tell us her
story. It felt like a Kate Morton novel, a passive mystery, that of an outsider
looking in on events that are no longer a threat to her.
The language used to describe Lily’s past is lovely –
flowing and atmospheric. However, the flow was sometimes interrupted by a
particularly jarring metaphor or unnecessary adjectives. This is Bitto’s debut
novel, but she also has a Ph.D. in creative writing – the writing is almost
perfect in a technical sense, but there is a lack of experience. I was
impressed that each and every character felt so real and complex, pulling us
into their story. This novel wasn’t suspenseful, but its mysterious, leisurely
pace was completely enjoyable and I look forward to Bitto’s next novel.
I received this book from Legend Press and NetGalley in
exchange for an honest review.
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