Eliza Henry-Jones is a new writer to me. Everything about Ache is beautiful, from the cover, with those piercing eyes, to the prose, which tumbles from the page and into readers’ hearts.
A year ago, a devastating bushfire ripped Annie’s world apart – killing her grandmother, traumatising her young daughter and leaving her mother’s home in the mountains half destroyed. Annie fled back to the city, but the mountain continues to haunt her. Now, drawn by a call for help from her uncle, she’s going back to the place she loves most in the world, to try to heal herself, her marriage, her daughter and her mother.
A heart-wrenching, tender and lovely novel about loss, grief and regeneration, Ache is not only a story of how we can be broken, but how we can put ourselves back together.
Henry-Jones is one of those writers you want to emulate – she has a gift for evoking images, insights and emotions in readers in a way that few can match. A story about peoples’ struggles in the aftermath of a devastating bushfire, it delves deep into the complexity of feelings, reactions and traumas that such an experience provokes.
The result is a tender, luminous story about mothers and daughters, about relationships, and about finding peace and healing. It made me cry, reflect, and wonder. I will read this again, and I will be looking for the author’s debut novel, In the Quiet to add to my reading list. I’d urge you to do the same. (HarperCollins, RRP $29.99AUD.) Read a sample here.
Monique Mulligan
For more of Monique Mulligan’s writing on books, check out Write Note Reviews
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- The Making of Christina by Meredith Jaffé – book review
- Sixty Seconds by Jesse Blackadder – book review
- Faithful by Alice Hoffman – book review
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television