Wildflowers tells the story of three sisters through the eyes of the middle sister, Nina, as she and Meg battle to pull their youngest sibling, Amber, out of a serious drug addiction. The story moves between past and present, alternating between light memories of a carefree childhood, darker memories of the recent past when the sisters stage an intervention, and the present where Nina is falling into a dark depression.

Nina uses memories to try to find the cause of her sister’s addiction but, in the process, her own life experiences come to the fore: her empty relationships, drifting away from her family and the growing need to give up on everything. Nina always carried a restlessness in her but when the cause of despair is revealed it’s heartbreaking.

Frew’s writing is considered but effortless. I loved Frew’s sibling dynamic with all its complicated mingling of love, jealousy, annoyance and loyalty. Nina’s depression is visceral: you’re in the room when she doesn’t want to get out of bed, you’re in the kitchen with the sisters when Amber comes in wild-eyed and withdrawing from drugs. This is not a book where you’re a mere spectator.

Wildflowers offers a perspective on the relentlessness and exhaustion of addiction, not through the eyes of the addict, but the family members who never give up, who are in pain and mourning the loss of the person they knew and the life they shared.

Wildflowers is heartbreaking and hopeful all at once.

Reviewed by Anabel Pandiella

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peggy Frew’s first novel, House of Sticks, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer, and was shortlisted for the UTS Glenda Adams Prize for New Writing. Hope Farm, her second novel, won the Barbara Jefferis Award, was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.

She has been published in New Australian Stories 2, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin and the Big Issue. Peggy is also a member of the critically acclaimed and award-winning Melbourne band Art of Fighting.