- Prize-winning Australian author Diana Reid's third novel once again focuses on personal and family relationships and their intricate dynamics. She takes a microscope to her main characters and is relentless at examining them in detail. In this novel she explores the legacies of broken families, abandoned children, and sexual abuse. She digs deep but does it with extreme subtlety and compassion.
- The book becomes, as it proceeds, more of a murder mystery than anything else. An intriguing one, right to the end. If 'end' is the appropriate word.
- The chapters alternate between what happened in 2008, and what's happening now in 2024. Abuse in France in 2008 and the longterm effects still felt in 2024.
- The main character Cass was trapped in an old icehouse on the grounds of a large villa in France when she was thirteen. The door closed after her and she was imprisoned in the small dark place for three hours. Later in life she started to suffer frequent seizures, which could have been epilepsy, or something else, perhaps a neurological reaction to abuse. Psychosomatic, in other words.
- The other main character is Anika, Cass's long time friend. She was also groped in the icehouse during the same holiday in 2008. She's a delightful character, rebellious but a thinker.
- The other main character is Anika, Cass's long time friend. She was also groped in the icehouse during the same holiday in 2008. She's a delightful character, rebellious but a thinker.
- Who was the perpetrator?
- Reid tells the story in sometimes dense prose, and too frequently bogs the reader down in psychological analysis, nevertheless we're totally sucked in. So as it proceeds the novel becomes unputdownable.
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