Sometimes a debut novel comes along that leaves you just a little bit in awe that it’s the author’s debut! The Grapevine by Kate Kemp is one of those. It has such a perfect sense of place and time, and the moodiness of it just jumped right off the page (well, ok, off the Kindle!), almost like it was its own character. It’s very, very good and you should definitely read it!
Blurb:
It’s the height of summer in Australia, 1979, and on a quiet suburban cul-de-sac a housewife is scrubbing the yellow and white checkered tiles of the bathroom floor. But all is not as it seems. For one thing, it’s 3am. For another, she is trying desperately to remove all traces of blood before they stain. Her husband seems remarkably calm, considering he has just murdered their neighbour.
As the sun rises on Warrah Place, news of Antonio Marietti’s death spreads like wildfire, gossip is exchanged in whispers and suspicion mounts. Twelve-year-old Tammy, an amateur observational scientist, is not alone in feeling determined to find out what happened. There are secrets behind every closed door in the neighbourhood, and the identity of the murderer is only one of them . . .
My Review:
This is a moody, atmospheric read. I could feel the heat rising off the pavement of Warrah Place, a suburban cul-de-sac, sweltering amid a late ’70’s heatwave. The sticky discontent of every single character is almost palpable and readers will find themselves physically adjusting clothing and wanting to gulp down gallons of water, just to find some relief from the unbearable heat.
For a quiet little street, there’s a lot going on behind closed doors. For one thing, there’s the murder of Antonio from ‘the Italian House’, and the fact that it’s quickly clear that whoever did it is one of the residents of their supposedly secure enclave. The story is told from the perspective of Tammy, an awkward 12-year-old who’s decided that it’s up to her to solve Antonio’s murder. While she quietly studies her ant colonies and is stuck looking after Colin, a strange little boy whose own mother seems even more distant and unavailable than Tammy’s own mother, she realizes that you can find out a lot just by watching and being invisible.
Because this takes place in an era when women were still not really valued or considered for their opinions or ideas. They were secondary to the men who were more important and who were running the show. But the undercurrent of dissatisfaction that was felt by women of this time runs through this story, and is evident in the feelings and actions of the women of Warrah Place. They inherently know that if they don’t support each other (even if they don’t particularly like each other), then nobody – certainly not any of their men – is going to do it. They might not even be sure what shape or form that support is going to take at any given time, but they’ll do what they can.
As the lies and secrets that have been hiding behind the closed doors of the cul-de-sac start to be revealed, Tammy starts to understand that what began as a quest to attain value and relevance in the eyes of her peers before the end of the summer, might end with a very different conclusion to the one she’d imagined. She is a valiant little heroine that readers will find themselves quietly cheering for.
As for the rest of the residents of Warrah Place, they’re not an altogether likeable bunch. They’re flawed, for sure, but it’s their determination to struggle through that made me want to continue reading about their exploits and their attempts to continue with their day-to-day lives, despite this tragedy that had landed in their midst. The story is so character-driven that I found myself completely forgetting about the murder and who’d committed it.
Thank you to Compulsive Readers for the blog tour. I can’t wait to see what Kate Kemp has up her sleeve next!
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