There’s something of the deja vu about a day that starts with a picnic in the scorching heat of the Australian bush and ends in a chilling discovery. Kate Morton’s Homecoming begins with a suggestion of Picnic at Hanging Rock but that’s where the similarity ends.
Christmas Eve 1959 in the Adelaide Hills, a family picnic by a waterhole turns to tragedy. A gruesome discovery is made that will become another of South Australia’s notorious unsolved murder cases. A young mother and her three children are dead and a baby is missing.
December 2018 in London, Jess, a journalist, is at a crossroads. She’s lost her job, broken up with her partner and over-extended herself financially. When she receives news that her beloved grandmother is gravely ill in hospital, she immediately returns to Australia.
What links these two scenarios and eventually provides the answer to the unsolved case is a web of deception and guarded secrets involving three generations of the Turner family.
Morton presents us with a Pandora’s box of multi-layered and interlinked individuals. For Jess, who sets out to unscramble the mysteries, she discovers that even her own identity is based on a deception.
In Homecoming Morton intertwines her favourite themes of houses with long memories, fragmented families, the emotional cost of motherhood and the secret agonies of childhood. Set against the backdrop of Australia, where danger and harshness co-exist with beauty, the story is masterfully told.
It’s not however without its faults, one being that Morton weaves such an elaborate tapestry that as the narrative nears the end, the final pulling together of loose threads is discernibly laborious. Morton, I think, could have dispensed with one or more subplots without detracting from the overall impact. While her scene-setting is for the most part vivid and atmospheric, there’s a lot of repetition. ‘Silver trunked gums’, for example, crop up regularly.
Nevertheless, there’s much to admire in this hefty book. Morton’s powerful storytelling and fluid prose ensure this novel will attract the wide acclaim of her previous books.
Reviewed by Anne Green
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