Review: GHOST CHILD, Caroline Overington

• 
  This edition provided as an e-book on Libby from my local library
  
• Published: 1 May 2010
• ISBN: 9781864714562
• Imprint: Random House Australia
• Pages: 384

Synopsis (publisher) 

Caroline Overington's stunning fiction debut is a multi-voiced novel centred around a child's death and its terrible repercussions.

In 1982 Victorian police were called to a home on a housing estate an hour west of Melbourne. There, they found a five-year-old boy lying still and silent on the carpet. There were no obvious signs of trauma, but the child, Jacob, died the next day.

The story made the headlines and hundreds attended the funeral. Few people were surprised when the boy's mother and her boyfriend went to prison for the crime. Police declared themselves satisfied with the result, saying there was no doubt that justice had been done.

And yet, for years rumours swept the estate and clung like cobwebs to the long-vacant house: there had been a cover-up. The real perpetrator, at least according to local gossip, was the boy's six-year-old sister, Lauren . . .

Twenty years on, Lauren has created a new life for herself, but details of Jacob's death being to resurface and the story again makes the newspapers. As Lauren struggles with the ghosts of her childhood, it seems only a matter of time before the past catches up with her.

My Take

The multi-voiced structure of this novel was certainly ambitious for a debut author, and it keeps the reader on their toes.

The policeman in charge of the investigation always knew that the story told the public, the one that came out in court, that put the mother in gaol, wasn't quite right. But Lauren has lived with the truth for 20 years.

The novel is very critical of the welfare system in Victoria, which separated the family, and put them, with varying degrees of success into foster homes.

The book is accompanied in the final pages by Reading Group Questions.

My rating: 4.4

I've also read

• 4.4, SISTERS OF MERCY
• 4.5, NO PLACE LIKE HOME
• 4.7, I CAME TO SAY GOODBYE
• 4.5, CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?
• 4.5, THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
• 4.7, THE ONES YOU TRUST
• 4.5, SISTERS OF MERCY  

Review: SISTERS OF MERCY, Carol Overington

• 
  This edition made available through Libby by my local library
  
• Published: 1 November 2012
• ISBN: 9781742750446
• Imprint: Random House Australia
• Format: EBook
• Pages: 320

Synopsis (publisher)

Sisters of Mercy by Caroline Overington is the haunting crime novel story of two sisters - one has vanished, the other is behind bars...

Snow Delaney was born a generation and a world away from her sister, Agnes.

Until recently, neither even knew of the other's existence. They came together only for the reading of their father's will - when Snow discovered, to her horror, that she was not the sole beneficiary of his large estate.

Now Snow is in prison and Agnes is missing, disappeared in the eerie red dust that blanketed Sydney from dawn on September 23, 2009.

With no other family left, Snow turns to crime journalist Jack Fawcett, protesting her innocence in a series of defiant letters from prison. Has she been unfairly judged? Or will Jack's own research reveal a story even more shocking than the one Snow wants to tell?

With Sisters of Mercy Caroline Overington once again proves she is one of the most exciting new novelists of recent years.

My Take

I was amazed to find, when I began structuring this review, that I had actually read this book 10 years ago (see my original review here) but I honestly had no recollection of it.

The main story is told by two main narrators. One is Snow Delaney who is in jail for cruelty to disabled children, and is suspected of having somehow disposed of her missing sister. Snow denies knowing anything about that, but in the the light of what we learn about what she has done to children in her foster care, how reliable is she as a narrator? The other narrator is Jack "Tap" Fawcett, a journalist who has been following the disappearance of Agnes Moore, and with whom Snow begins a correspondence when she is in jail. In the letters to Fawcett Snow fills in her back story and tries to convince him of her innocence. Fawcett is unequivocal in his belief that Snow has had something to with her sister's disappearance, but how reliable a narrator is he?

(Date discrepancy

Text in the novel says John Moore went to Oxford in 1930 at age of 20, and that he was picked for the Melbourne Olympics in athletics in 1956. That would make him 46 then. Surely he must have been at Oxford later than that? Something like 1954? 

Agnes Moore met her husband John in Western Australia in 1958 when she was 17, and she was born in 1940. When she disappeared in 2009 she was 69.)

This was an interesting read, particularly the details of how Snow "managed" the "care" of 19 disabled children. It makes you wonder how much based on fact those details are.

My rating: 4.5

I've also read

4.4, SISTERS OF MERCY
4.5, NO PLACE LIKE HOME
4.7, I CAME TO SAY GOODBYE
4.5, CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?
4.5, THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
4.7, THE ONES YOU TRUST

Review: THE ONES YOU TRUST, Caroline Overington

• this edition published 2018 by Harper Collins Publishers
• ISBN 978-1-4607-5582-2
• 328 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

Emma Cardwell, celebrity mum and host of top-rating morning TV show Cuppa, seems to have it all: fame, money and a gorgeous family. But when her little girl disappears from day-care - captured on CCTV footage at a nearby shopping centre leaving with someone Emma has never seen before - her world is turned upside down.

As the minutes tick by, and pressure mounts, every part of Emma's life comes under examination. Is this a kidnapping, the work of a crazed stalker, or an obsessed fan? Is somebody out for revenge or is this something closer to home?

And there is the aching question: how much do we really know about those who care for our children . . . and about the people we love?

My Take

When Emma arrives home after a long day she finds that her husband has forgotten to collect their young daughter from child care. But it is now 8 pm so where is Fox? Why hasn't anybody from the child care centre contacted her?

The police are called in and despite their best efforts to keep the news low key the television station that Emma works for takes over the management of the publicity. Fox's disappearance turns out to be a publicity bonanza as PJ, Emma's colleague on the morning show, head up a live presentation that focusses on Fox's recovery.

The book has the reader guessing who has been responsible for the kidnapping, perhaps even Emma herself, and the story twists and turns almost unpredictably. I certainly didn't forsee the final explanation.

The story takes an almost cynical look at what goes on in the television industry to keep programmes alive, presenters attractive and popular, and fresh stories coming.

My rating: 4.7

I've also read
4.4, SISTERS OF MERCY
4.5, NO PLACE LIKE HOME
4.7, I CAME TO SAY GOODBYE
4.5, CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?
4.5, THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

Review: CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?, Caroline Overington

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 463 KB
• Print Length: 288 pages
• Publisher: Random House Australia (August 27, 2014)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00JP1AOZ6
• Source: NetGalley

Synopsis (NetGalley)

How well do you really know the one you love?

With her customary page-turning style and potent themes, this is Caroline Overington at her thought-provoking best.

'Why do some people decide to get married when everyone around them would seem to agree that marriage, at least for the two people in question, is a terrifically bad idea?'
The year is 1999, and Lachlan Colbert - Colby - has the world at his feet. He's got a big job on Wall Street and a sleek bachelor pad in the heart of Manhattan. With money no object, he and his friends take a trip to Australia to see in the new millennium.

And it's there, on a hired yacht sailing the Whitsundays, that he meets Caitlin. Caitlin Hourigan has got wild hair and torn shorts - and has barely ever left the small patch of Queensland where she grew up. But Colby is smitten and for Caitlin, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, a blissful future awaits - marriage, a big house, a beautiful little boy. But nothing is ever as perfect as it seems. And for Lachlan and Caitlin the nightmare is only just beginning.

My Take

I thought this started off a little slowly and tentatively, but it gathers pace to become a story of surprising twists and depths.

It is one of those novels that is hard to review because I don't want to reveal too much of the story simply because the synopsis doesn't, and I don't want to spoil it for you.

On one level it is the story of Caitlin's life after she sees the building next to Colby's apartment block in Manhattan, the World Trade Centre, crumble when a plane flies into it on 9/11. Like many others, Caitlin finds herself unable to board a plane, and so she doesn't return to Australia, and marries Colby instead. But that is only the beginning of the impact on Caitlin's psyche.

So I'm sorry, you are going to have to read it for yourself, to learn the story.

I'm fascinated by the way Caroline Overington takes one simple idea or event and merges it so seamlessly with other ideas.

My rating: 4.5

I've also reviewed
4.4, SISTERS OF MERCY
4.5, NO PLACE LIKE HOME
4.7, I CAME TO SAY GOODBYE

Review: I CAME TO SAY GOODBYE, Caroline Overington

• Format: Kindle
  
• File Size: 381 KB
• Print Length: 336 pages
• Publisher: Cornerstone Digital (September 26, 2013)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00D48BT1E

Synopsis (Amazon)

It was a crime that shocked the world.

The CCTV footage shows a young woman pushing through the hospital doors.

She walks into the nursery, picks up a baby and places her carefully in a shopping bag.

She walks out to the car park, towards an old Ford Corolla. For a moment, she holds the child gently against her breast and, with her eyes closed, she smells her.

Then she clips the baby into the car, gets in and drives off. This is where the footage ends.

What happens next will leave a mother devastated, and a little boy adrift in a world he will never understand.

My Take

This is another novel by Caroline Overington that sits on the perimeter of crime fiction. Certainly a crime is committed, probably more the one, but the primary focus of the novel is social issues: parents who fail their children, community services that fail their users, bureaucracy that gets in the way of understanding, systems that leave families and their members in limbo.

Two primary narrators, Med and his daughter Kat, tell the reader about the tragedies that have overtaken their family through letters to a Family Court judge who is to give a ruling about the custody of a child. We learn of Med's struggle to raise his family on his own after his wife walks out when his youngest child is just two. Med does a pretty good job, but, in his own judgement, just not good enough.

The setting is a small coastal town in rural New South Wales. Med's two older children leave, leaving him to raise the younger daughter on his own. 

Underpinning the story, and giving it a biting edge, is criticism of Australian services that should be providing support for families. Clearly bureaucracy gets in the way of empathy, and cost cutting means that services are reduced. And above all, this novel is well constructed, and a really good read.

There are plenty of things to discuss with this novel, and the author provides some further discussion questions after the text.

My rating: 4.7

Review: NO PLACE LIKE HOME, Caroline Overington

• format: Amazon (Kindle)
• File Size: 434 KB
• Print Length: 203 pages
• Publisher: Random House Australia (September 25, 2013)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00DBOF5FW

Synopsis (Amazon)

From bestselling author and award-winning journalist Caroline Overington comes another thought-provoking and heart-rending story, that reaches from the heart of Bondi to a small village in Tanzania.

Shortly after 9.30 in the morning, a young man walks into Surf City, Bondi's newest shopping complex. He's wearing a dark grey hoodie - and a bomb around his neck.

Just a few minutes later he is locked in a shop on the upper floor. And trapped with him are four innocent bystanders.

For police chaplain Paul Doherty, called to the scene by Senior Sergeant Boehm, it's a story that will end as tragically as it began. For this is clearly no ordinary siege. The boy, known as Ali Khan, seems as frightened as his hostages and has yet to utter a single word.

The seconds tick by for the five in the shop: Mitchell, the talented schoolboy; Mouse, the shop assistant; Kimmi, the nail-bar technician; and Roger Callaghan, the real estate agent whose reason for being in Bondi that day is far from innocent.

And of course there's Ali Khan. Is he the embodiment of evil, as the villagers in his Tanzanian birthplace believe? Or just an innocent boy, betrayed at every turn, who just wants a place to call home?

My Take

The story takes readers through the background of all the people who are locked in the shop with Tanzaniaan refugee Ali Khan. The narrator is former Catholic priest, police chaplain Paul Doherty, who contacts each of the people locked in the shop after the event for trauma counselling.We benefit from the research he has done about each of these people.

Part of what each reader must ask herself is how you would react in this situation. The shopping centre is in lock down with the voice of Senior Sergeant Boehm booming instructions over a loud speaker system. And yet Ali Khan is showing no sign of understanding.

The book also broaches issues with which Australians are familiar, or are we? Do we really know how refugees are treated under the Australian border protection systems? What are the detention centres housing refugees and asylum seekers really like? Why was Ali Khan, a genuine refugee who has an Australian passport, in Baxter and Villawood for four years?  This is a book that will make you think.

And Paul Doherty has his own problems too, his own crisis of faith, which perhaps does not make him the best narrator.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME is written as a thriller, and, true to form, we do not find out what happened in the last minutes of the siege until the very end.

A good read by an Australian author to look for.
My rating: 4.5

I have also read 4.4, SISTERS OF MERCY

Review: SISTERS OF MERCY, Caroline Overington

• Format: Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 614 KB
• Print Length: 213 pages
• Publisher: Random House Australia (October 24, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B008NEZXG6
• source: I bought it

Synopsis (Amazon)

Sisters of Mercy by Caroline Overington is the haunting story of two sisters - one has vanished, the other is behind bars...Snow Delaney was born a generation and a world away from her sister, Agnes.

Until recently, neither even knew of the other's existence. They came together only for the reading of their father's will - when Snow discovered, to her horror, that she was not the sole beneficiary of his large estate.

Now Snow is in prison and Agnes is missing, disappeared in the eerie red dust that blanketed Sydney from dawn on September 23, 2009. With no other family left, Snow turns to crime journalist Jack Fawcett, protesting her innocence in a series of defiant letters from prison. Has she been unfairly judged? Or will Jack's own research reveal a story even more shocking than the one Snow wants to tell?

With Sisters of Mercy Caroline Overington once again proves she is one of the most exciting new novelists of recent years.

My Take - I may not have been able to avoid spoilers here

This book has an interesting structure: the main narration is by Jack "Tap" Fawcett, a journalist who has been following the disappearance of Agnes Moore, a British visitor to Sydney, and the trial of her sister Snow Delaney for cruelty to the disabled children in her care.

Through letters from prison to Jack, Snow recounts her life story to the point where her father dies and she discovers through the lawyer who is the executor of her estate that she has an older sister to whom she must offer half of her considerable inheritance.

The author uses world and Australian events such as "the dismissal" of Gough Whitlam in 1975 to place the novel in time. Agnes Moore, born in London in 1940, was evacuated to Australia during the war and spent her childhood in Western Australia before returning to Britain as a young woman. I did wonder at the time of reading how effective this historical setting technique would be for non- Australian readers.

Because of the recounting of Snow's life the novel takes a long time to get to the disappearance of Agnes, Snow's older sister who has come from England to Sydney to meet her. I'm not sure we really needed all that back story. Snow's life is described through her letters to Jack, and in the light of later revelations, we do have to question her reliability as a narrator.

Although an afterword tells us SISTERS OF MERCY is entirely a work of fiction, I couldn't help wondering how much of the truly horrific things that Snow Delaney does have come from cases the author has come across as a journalist.

At the end of the novel there is a set of questions for reading groups intended to help them get more out of the novel by considering some aspects and incidents in depth. I read SISTERS OF MERCY for my face to face reading group and unfortunately I'll be absent for the discussion. I'd love to be a fly on the wall because there is really plenty to talk about. It is a novel that frustrated, horrified, and captivated me all at the same time.

This is the first book I've read by this Australian author.

My rating: 4.4

Review by Bernadette.