Morton, Kate. Homecoming. New York: Mariner Books, 2023.
ISBN-13: 978-0063020894 | $32.00 USD | 560 pages | Historical Fiction
Blurb
The highly anticipated new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Clockmaker’s Daughter, a sweeping novel that begins with a shocking crime, the effects of which echo across continents and generations
Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of a grand country house, a local man makes a terrible discovery. Police are called, and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most baffling murder investigations in the history of South Australia.
Many years later and thousands of miles away, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for two decades, she now finds herself unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and is seriously ill in the hospital.
At Nora’s house, Jess discovers a true crime book chronicling a long-buried police case: the Turner Family Tragedy of 1959. It is only when Jess skims through its pages that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this notorious event – a mystery that has never been satisfactorily resolved.
An epic story that spans generations, Homecoming asks what we would do for those we love, how we protect the lies we tell, and what it means to come home. Above all, it is an intricate and spellbinding novel from one of the finest writers working today.
Review
5 stars
Kate Morton has become one of my favorite authors for dual-timeline historical fiction, and most of her books have been winners for me. But Homecoming feels like one of her best, in my personal opinion. It beautifully renders its descriptions of the Australian locations that serve as the backdrop for the book’s events, while also using not just multiple perspectives, but different styles to capture the complex nature of the central tragedy of the book. To get to read long passages from the true-crime book that explores the historical case along with Jess was particularly well-done, and showed the public’s opinion as rendered by a single journalist alongside Jess’s mission to unravel elements of the story that weren’t included.
The central themes directly concern the relationships between mothers and their children. In the contemporary timeline, Jess has a complex relationship with her mother, Polly, and is much closer to her grandmother, Nora, while Nora and Polly’s relationship is also similarly strained. I liked how the layers of what happened in Nora’s past contextualize those relationships: how protective and a bit possessive Nora was, and the deceptions she told the world from the time of the tragedy and took to her grave, thinking it was the right thing to do. I very much felt for Jess, who had her solid bond with her grandmother upended, and for Polly, who finds out some things about herself, her mother, and her past that were deeply unsettling, even with their contentious relationship.
The mystery itself, interwoven intricately with the family drama, is intriguing and made what initially seemed like a tome of a book unputdownable. I was so compelled by the questions around what happened to Isabel and her children, I had to keep reading. Isabel, like Nora herself, had secrets, and I took in each page with baited breath, wondering what they were, because it surely wasn’t the obvious conclusion everyone had come to. By the time what had happened to her had been revealed, I was deeply saddened, because of her situation at that time. There were some things that were very suspicious from the outset, because there were certain elements like the missing child found buried years later apart from the others that didn’t fit with the neat-and-tidy “murder-suicide” explanation the general public came up with, and I appreciate how Morton planted those breadcrumbs so the reader could pick up on them, even if some of the characters did not.
This is a stunning book, and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes multi-timeline historical fiction with strong mystery elements.
Author Bio
Kate Morton is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The House at Riverton, The Forgotten Garden, The Distant Hours, The Secret Keeper, The Lake House, and The Clockmaker’s Daughter. Her books are published in 38 languages and have been #1 bestsellers worldwide. She is a native Australian, holds degrees in dramatic art and English literature. She lives with her family in London and Australia.
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