Book Review: Homecoming by Kate Morton

My Rating: 4.5⭐️

“People who grow up in old houses come to understand that buildings have characters. That they have memories and secrets to tell. One must merely learn to listen, and then to comprehend, as with any language.”

Jess Turner-Bridges, a forty-year-old journalist, is called back to Sydney, Australia, from her current home in London when her grandmother Nora is hospitalized after a fall. Nora’s accident occurred while she was searching for something in the attic of her home, Darling House. Nora had raised Jess after Polly, Nora's daughter and Jess’s mother, left for Brisbane when Jess was only ten years old. Jess and Polly have remained in touch, but they are not close. As her grandmother floats in and out of consciousness, she utters a few disjointed phrases that initially do not make much sense to Jess. Jess learns that her grandmother had been agitated over the last few days. As Jess tries to find out what caused her grandmother’s recent distress, a significant childhood memory resurfaces and she begins to piece together what her grandmother was trying to convey in her semi-conscious state.

Her research leads her to discover events in her family’s history on her mother and grandmother’s side dating back over sixty years --a tragedy that occurred in 1959 in the small town of Tambilla in South Australia – that sent shockwaves through the small town. Jess also learns of a true crime book, “As If They Were Asleep” written by Daniel Miller, an American journalist who was living in the vicinity during the time, that documents the details of the Turner family living in Tambilla and the tragedy, the ensuing police investigation and features true accounts shared by the townspeople of Tambilla who knew the Turners as well as Nora herself. As the narrative progresses, Jess discovers that there was much about her family and her grandmother that was deliberately kept secret from her – facts that will shake the very foundation of what she believes to be her reality.

Kate Morton is a masterful storyteller. The author seamlessly weaves dual timelines and multiple perspectives into a well-structured and fluid narrative. The vivid imagery, intriguing plot and superb characterizations render this novel a compelling read. The beautiful prose draws you in from the very first page. Both timelines are well depicted. While we follow Jess in the present day, past events are revealed through flashbacks from 1958-59 from multiple perspectives with segments from Daniel Miller’s true-crime book and his research notes interspersed throughout the novel. We also get a few chapters from Polly’s perspective, giving us a window into her complicated relationships with her mother and her daughter. The author excels in developing the nuanced and complex characters and the storylines of the different women in the story – Isabel, Nora, Jess and Polly – each of these characters stands out and we go through a spectrum of emotions as we follow the events that impact their lives – from sorrow and sympathy to shock, exasperation and outrage and much more.

The story touches upon themes of loss, motherhood, home and how we define family. The author also incorporates the issue of mental health in a very subtle manner. As far as the mystery element of this story is concerned, there are plenty of breadcrumbs strewn throughout the narrative and though I could guess, in part, the direction in which the story was headed, I was genuinely surprised by much of what is revealed as all the threads of the story are brought together toward the end. The pacing is a tad uneven but not so much that it detracts from the overall reading experience. The story does move faster in the second half. However, I should mention that this is a meticulously detailed, lengthy novel (540 + pages) and I thought that a few segments could have been shorter.

Overall, exquisitely written, atmospheric and immersive, Homecoming by Kate Morton is an intricately woven story that I would not hesitate to recommend to historical fiction fans and those who enjoy multigenerational family sagas with an element of suspense. Finally, I just have to mention that cover! It is stunning!

Many thanks to Mariner Books for the ARC of this beautifully written novel. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

"Home, she’d realised, wasn’t a place or a time or a person, though it could be any or all of those things: home was a feeling, a sense of being complete. The opposite of ‘home’ wasn’t ‘away’, it was ’lonely’. When someone said, ‘I want to go home’, what they really meant was that they didn’t want to feel lonely anymore.”