"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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Jessie Else disappeared the summer the Lambs came to Magpie Beach. Not that the two events were connected at all, in reality; only in my own head, in my own world. They marked for me the end of a certain quiet time and the start of a more complicated living.
Magpie Beach is a quiet seaside town – full of small-town prejudices and small-town cliques. Meg, Rosemary and Lily are all outsiders. Meg and Lily because they came to Magpie Beach to escape their former lives, Rosemary because her upbringing was the subject of much local gossip and upturned noses. The three women come together as friends, partly because their homes are so close together on the outskirts of town – and partly because their neighbours treat them with such suspicion.
When Jessie Else, all of 9 years old, goes missing – it’s easy to see why this small band of outcasts are first on the list of suspects – but what they didn't realise is that Jessie’s disappearance is only the beginning of their troubles. Soon all those secrets they’ve been trying to hide are going to be uncovered – and nothing will ever be the same again.
An Afterlife for Rosemary Lamb features in the following genres: General Fiction, Crime and Mystery, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Thriller and Suspense, Fiction, Star Books, Recommendations, Literary Fiction, Literary Fiction
An Afterlife for Rosemary Lamb is available in Paperback, Hardback
An Afterlife for Rosemary Lamb was written by Louise Wolhuter and published by Ultimo Press
An Afterlife for Rosemary Lamb has 304 pages
£8.09
