Publishers Weekly
★ 12/23/2019
Murray’s masterful adult debut (after the Cedar B. Hartley and Henrietta children’s series) explores a family’s fraught relationships in a small Australian town in the early 1980s. Awakened during a sweltering, mosquito-plagued night, nine-year-old Ada sees her father, Mike, having sex with a family friend. In the morning, Ada tells her older sister, Tilly, that she saw their father doing “something bad.” Tilly confronts Mike to no avail, which drives a wedge between him and his daughters. The girls also struggle with their mother, Martha, who treats 17-year-old Tilly especially coldly, leading Ben, the 15-year-old favorite middle child, to conclude that Martha must be jealous of Tilly’s talent on the piano. Murray nimbly illustrates the tensions running through the family using various points of view, describing emotions and events with fluid precision. A glimpse of Tilly “like a just-opened flower” sends Martha into a “sudden tumult of yearning for her own youth and the familiar tang of regret that she had lost it.” As the second act unfolds, the married couple’s entwined relationship with Mike’s college friend Arnold emerges through a series of eerie scenes that illuminate the roots of Martha’s bitterness, as well as Mike’s compulsion toward infidelity. Murray’s unflinching, intuitive tale will satisfy readers who like their family dramas with a strong dose of darkness. (Apr.)
Booklist
"Murray perfectly captures the claustrophobia of family life, driven by an emotional barometer that swings from tender feelings of closeness and belonging to long-simmering resentment and regret."
Susan Crandall
"I felt this wonderful story as much as read it."
Courtney Maum
"In this story of a young Australian family whose concealed deceptions are driving them apart, Murray writes with sensual tenderness about the buried yearnings that threaten and sustain our most cherished relationships, as well as our perverse human tendency to constantly test their strength."
Julia Fierro
"The Bloom family will absolutely have your heart. Ada Bloom is a sweet, precocious girl traversing that strange territory on the edge of childhood. Her sister Tilly and brother Ben are testing the waters of adulthood, each in their own way. Their parents, Martha and Mark, are both tempted by people in their lives, old and new, in disastrous ways. Readers will be spellbound by this honest and tender accounting of each Bloom family member, told in a chorus of voices, revealing a intimate and flawed family portrait that leaves you feeling connected to everyone around you. Martine Murray's stunning debut is a true delight."
Kirkus Reviews
2020-01-13
A family begins to come apart at the seams over the course of a summer in a small Australian town in the early 1980s.
Young Ada Bloom, a dreamy child prone to "looking deeply into things and making up mysteries," finds her world turned upside down when she stumbles upon her father, Mike, in flagrante delicto with family friend Susie Layton. But Mike's secret, which Ada shares with her beloved older sister, Tilly, only widens the cracks in the foundation of the Bloom family. Self-absorbed matriarch Martha favors cricket-star son Ben at the expense of Tilly and struggles to be a loving mother to her children while concealing her own dark secret. Tilly, desperate to escape her mother, dreams of Melbourne and her dreamy crush, Raff Cavallo. In her first novel for adults, Murray (Marsh and Me, 2019) paints a vivid picture of the complications of family life and particularly of childhood. While Murray's adult characters can feel static, her younger protagonists, Tilly and Ada in particular, are immediately gripping. Murray deftly illustrates Tilly's internal contradictions; at once a rebellious teenager and a young girl frightened of the future, she is startled by her own declaration that she hopes to leave her small hometown. Her spontaneous announcement feels "like a reach for the self she wanted to be, the self that had tottered forward." Ada's disillusionment with her father is similarly balanced by a stubborn belief in the world's beauty and her own force of will; Mike despairs at his cynicism in the face of Ada's "own raw little love." Regrettably, the plot loses steam instead of building to a satisfying climax. Nevertheless, there is much here to admire.
An empathetic family story that works best when illuminating the inner lives of its young female protagonists.
