THE SILENT KOOKABURRA.

THE SILENT KOOKABURRA by LIZA PERRAT.

BACK COVER BLURB: All eleven-year-old Tanya Randall wants is a happy family. But Mum does nothing besides housework, Dad’s always down the pub and Nanna Purvis moans at everyone except her dog. Then Shelley arrives - the miracle baby who fuses the Randall family in love for their little gumnut blossom.

Tanya’s life gets even better when she meets an uncle she didn’t know she had. He tells her she’s beautiful and could be a model. Her family refuses to talk about him. But that’s okay, it’s their little secret.

Then one blistering summer day tragedy strikes, and the surrounding mystery and suspicion tear apart this fragile family web.

 Embracing the social changes of 1970s Australia, against a backdrop of native fauna and flora, The Silent Kookaburra is a haunting exploration of the blessings, curses and tyranny of memory.

FIRST SENTENCE {CHAPTER 1: 2016}: Knuckles blanch, distend as my hands curves around the yellowed newspaper pages and my gaze hooks onto the headlines.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {PAGE 57}: Mum took a Valium with her milk, the pills the doc had prescribed for anxiety and sleeplessness in those sad times after the unborn babies. She crushed part of another tablet into the bottle she made up for Shelley's night feed, along with a dose of Old Lenny's Coca-Cola.

SOURCE: Received for review from the author.

READ FOR: Not applicable.

MY THOUGHTS: YAY! With three previous works of amazing historical fiction under her belt, Liza Perrat does it again with, no, not another historical fiction, but this, a novel of psychological suspense. And my, is the suspense palpable.

In a total about-change from her previous novels which are set in rural France, The Silent Kookaburra, a truly chilling read made all the more so by the fact its narrated by eleven year old Tanya Randall, is set in 1970's Australia. 

Taunted by many of her peers and with a mother who has mental health problems, I saw much of my younger self in the pre-pubescent Tanya. But it wasn't Tanya, nor indeed her seemingly dysfunctional parents, who captured my imagination so much as Nanna Purvis. 

A relative many of us growing up in the early 1960's to late 1970's will recognise. An opinionated character who, 'tells it as she sees it', Nanna Purvis is as ignorant as much as she is prejudiced but, with her 'very cow's veins' and friendship with Old Lenny, provides some wonderfully light moments which considering the books themes - severe depression, adultery, paedophilia, the death of a baby, etc - are sorely needed. 

Every inch the tale of a family struggling with its demons .. past and present.  Though without a doubt dark, there is nothing gratuitous in the author's writing. Indeed I commend her wonderful story-telling for the fact that whilst of course I wanted Tanya's tormentor to get their comeuppance (who wouldn't?) at the same time a part of me came to understand that they too had their demons albeit ones that could never justify their heinous actions.