This story of family, loneliness and isolation follows the early life of Susie from the age of seven. Susie moves from the country to Melbourne with her dad. Her mum does not move into the new house with them but instead lives alone in a flat interspersed with stays at “the mind hospital” where she battles her own demons.
Susie’s visits to her mum, when her mum is well enough to live independently, are at times wonderful and at other times are a train wreck. She never quite knows who to expect when she sees her mum, or which mum she will find.
Susie’s journey from a young child to adolescence is filled with so many emotions. I worried so much for Susie, the bad decisions she made, her fears, heartbreaks and disappointments and above all her desperate need to be hugged and loved. There are ‘so many things Susie wanted to say but never could’. These are the unsaid things.
Susie’s story is interspersed with short chapters written from Miss Kaye’s point of view. Miss Kaye works at the Institute, a ‘place for the damaged, the outliers, the not-quite-rights’. Miss Kaye teaches Susie about ‘the loudness of unsaid things’, and that ‘living can be so much more satisfying than merely surviving’.
Quite a few reviews of this book are critical about the gap in time towards the end of the book between the young Susie and the much older woman she becomes, which I tend to agree with. The later chapters seemed a bit rushed, leaving me with unanswered questions about decades in Susie’s later life. I was a little confused as to what happened to Susie and who this Miss Kaye really is, but it soon became clear with quite a few surprises.
I found this coming-of-age tale very sad and heart wrenching, but it also made me smile, laugh and feel hopeful. A thoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile read that, as the book suggests, will make you kinder to those who are lost.
Fans of ‘Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’ and ‘A Man Called Ove’ will love this book. 9/10
-Tracey Luhrs, RRL
