This writer’s tantalising second novel is packed with marvellous characters, whose unfurling stories examine generational secrets
When Winter Robins’ mother, Nancy, dies, she leaves behind Winter and her twin brother, Four, and the story-filled joy of their childhood is dampened with grief. Their father, Lew, loses himself to a sorrow that is “immediate and blanketed everything”. Unable to care for – or even acknowledge – his young children, Lew uproots them from the familiar chill of the north of England to the dry outback of Australia, to live with their mother’s family: people they have never met.
This is where Louise Wolhuter’s second novel starts but it flits between the past and the present – and when we meet Winter as an adult, she’s in mandated therapy. Something dramatic has happened to get her there but she’s playing her cards close to her chest and we must wait for the mystery and twists to unfurl. The therapist has to wait too: “I lie awake at night digging deep for honest answers to her questions,” Winter reflects in her journal early on, “but they are not answers I will give her.”
Shadow of Winter Robins by Louise Wolhuter is published by Ultimo Press ($34.99)
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