A picturesque small town, a cosy community garden, a facade of tolerance and acceptance - but when three women with wildly different loyalties come together, what secrets and lies will be revealed? A timely novel exploring prejudice and privilege, from bestselling Australian author Fiona Lowe. Tara Hooper is at breaking point. With two young children, a business in a town struggling under an unexpected crime wave, and her husband more interested in his cricket team than their marriage, life is a juggling act. Then, when new neighbours arrive and they are exactly the sort of people the town doesn't want or need, things get worse.Life has taught Helen Demetriou two things: being homeless is terrifying and survival means keeping your cards close to your chest. Having clawed back some stability through her involvement in the community garden, she dares to relax. But as she uncovers some shady goings-on in the council, that stability turns to quicksand.For teenage mother Jade Innes, life can be lonely among the judgement of the town and the frequent absences of her boyfriend. A chance encounter draws her into the endangered community garden where she makes friends for the first time. Glimpsing a different way of life is enticing but its demands are terrifying. Does she even deserve to try?Can these women with such differing loyalties unite to save the garden and ultimately stop the town from tearing itself apart?PRAISE FOR FIONA LOWE:'The undisputed queen...' Canberra Weekly'Fiona's insight into the fickle nature of life ... and how best intentions can so easily come undone makes it simple to identify with her characters and lends an authentic resonance to this roller-coaster story.' - Australian Country'Fiona Lowe weaves an extraordinary story of loss, love, and forgiveness.' - GLAM Adelaide'If you loved Big Little Lies, you'll want to devour Fiona Lowe's Just an Ordinary Family next.' - Mamamia
An engrossing story of women's lives in a small community
A Home Like Ours offers an informative, occasionally troubling, but ultimately uplifting exploration of the lives of women in rural Australia.
The story is told from three separate perspectives, those of Tara, Helen and Jade.
Tara Hooper is among Boolanga's more affluent citizens, sharing her beautifully renovated heritage home with her husband Jon and two gorgeous children. She and her husband own the district's profitable hardware & nursery business, are part of a tight circle of friends and, on the surface at least, appear to have it all. But appearances aren't everything - Jon works long hours to maintain their store's market share in the face of competition from multinational competitors further affield, and often appears bored or disinterested. Tara is feeling unappreciated and angry, suspicious of Jon's apparent lack of attraction to her. She's taken up running with a personal trainer as a distraction from her increasing worries about the future of her marriage.
Helen Demetriou is entering later middle age without the security she'd always expected to have. She's endured periods of homelessness and subsists from day to day on her meagre income earned from a local takeaway store and her stipend as caretaker of Boolanga's community garden. Her brusque demeanour hides a sensitive soul who is fearful for her future and wary of forming close bonds with others in case they let her down. An activist at heart, Helen antagonises the rather conservative members of the community garden committee by pushing for the inclusion of all members of the community, rather than just the privileged few. Her long term goal is to establish a "tiny house" village for the use of older women who, like herself, have become homeless due to changed family and/or employment circumstances.
Jade Innes is the 19-year-old single mother of baby Milo. She's desperate to do a better job of parenting than her own mother, but is rather hamstrung by the disinterested attitude of Milo's father, an itinerant farm worker who seems more interested in drinking with his mates than being there for Jade and Milo. Jade's making tentative steps to make connections in Boolanga, joining the library to indulge her love of literature, and rather begrudgingly accepting a plot in the community garden, in which she can grow vegetables to eat and the flowers she's really more interested in.
The three women's lives intersect, and all three also make connections among the women from Boolanga's former refugee communities, originally from Afghanistan and Sudan. Initial prejudices and misconceptions are gradually broken down as new friendships are forged and each of the three main characters undergoes a sort of catharsis in terms of how they see themselves, their lives and their ideas of community.
Having grown up in a mid-sized rural town not too far north of fictional Boolanga's setting on the Victorian side of the great Murray River, I felt that Fiona Lowe's depiction of small town society, dynamics and xenophobia were well-described and representative of the reality many inhabitants experience. While there are many benefits of living in a smaller community, they can also be quite insular and offer limited opportunities for those who are struggling socially and/or financially.
The stories of all three women resonated with me, although my own present life circumstances probably most closely resemble those of the more privileged character, Tara. I found Lowe's storyline around the experience of unexpected chronic and debilitating illness particularly poignant.
At almost 600 pages, A Home Like Ours is a hefty tome and requires a reasonable degree of commitment from the reader. I haven't previously been a frequent reader of the "women's literature" genre beloved by so many of my friends and family, and it took me several chapters to really get into the feel of the book. However, by the halfway point I was well and truly hooked by the characters and their stories. I raced through the last portion of the book in a single sitting.
I'd recommend A Home Like Ours to readers interested in the lived experience of women, the challenges and wonderful gifts that come with living in an evolving multicultural community, and the importance of community in creating a sense of individual and group wellbeing.
Sarah, 20/04/2021
