"Centred on three female outcasts who live on the margins of a cliquey community, this exquisite Australian noir novel shimmers with secrets, unlikely sisterhood and gasp-inducing twists."
An engaging character study of three women, Louise Walhuter’s An Afterlife for Rosemary Lamb reels with harrowing tragedies and truly unexpected revelations. Brilliant at evoking the lives of unsettled souls who never find home - in themselves, or the world – it’s also brilliant at portraying the tentative forming of friendships, and life on the edge of an insular community.
“We all carry secrets. Some we are given for safekeeping, wrapped in velvety trust. Some we have only an idea of: a glimpse of something like a sock beneath a washer, a look between people who should not be looking, whispers overheard, words torn from pages. They are pebbles in our pockets, and those we bury deepest are our own”.
In part, this excerpt cuts to the core of An Afterlife for Rosemary Lamb. The three women whose narratives we follow have all come to Magpie Beach with secrets, and to escape their past. In this remote outcrop of Winifred, a “meat-and-potato town” replete with prejudices and suspicions, fellow outcasts Lily, Meg and Rosemary form an unlikely sisterhood. When a local nine-year-old girl goes missing, the town puts them at the top of the suspect list, but that’s just the beginning of an almighty unravelling.
With escalating revelations transforming a gradually-involving literary novel into a page-turner, An Afterlife for Rosemary Lamb presents a profound exploration of “the holes we dig. The lies we live” and all those “could have, should have” moments.
| Primary Genre | General Fiction |
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