Classic book of the day: The Mint Lawn by Gillian Mears
I’m telling him about drug squad Alsatians when he begins to cry. He’s quite far away, curled like a puppy on the collapsing curve of futon that was a wedding present from his parents. A sheet has rucked to reveal the beginning of a mildew problem on the mattress. Condensation dribbles down the inside of the coffee plunger until I push the grounds down hard. Outside, although it’s nearly spring, the sky is wet and old-looking. My husband isn’t crying because police dogs are heroin addicts from puppyhood, but I keep on relating the more intricate details. As a diversion, it isn’t successful. His crying is a high, unlikely whine. Unable to comfort, I pat the nearest part, his ankle, then edge away from its bony coolness. Did my mother make Ventry cry like this? I pull my hair into a ponytail and don’t know the certain answer. Did Ventry cry? Of course, of course. A clear memory exists but by then it was way too late.
Closer up, mildew is like a map. A faint grey outline of Tasmania is visible, heart-shaped and whole, so I watch this instead of a weeping husband. Through the doorway into the kitchen, the leftover sandwiches from lunch with Thomas are curling at the edges. Lightly, I hold my own hands, squeezing and unsqueezing them in time to his crying. My hands feel long and limp. Then his grief changes key. He’s crying with his mouth stretched so wide I can see, against my will, years of coffee stains etched on the underside of his front teeth.
‘Darling,’ he says.
Cover blurb
North Coast, New South Wales. Clementine is twenty-five and still living in the place where she grew up, rooted there by memories and her own inability to make changes until she has understood her past. The past is dominated by memories of her mother, and her mother, and her mother’s attempts to dramatise and enrich small-town life and the perceptions of her three clever, receptive daughters.
But only Clementine has stayed. Is this out of loyalty to her mother’s memory? Or to comfort her father? Perhaps she wants to find peace with Hugh, her earnest husband in whose house she most uncomfortably lives? Or is the lure Thomas, who alone can appreciate Clementine’s own sensuality, and her humour, but who must remain another of her secrets.
In The Mint Lawn, Gillian Mears has written a wonderful debut novel which will be read with pleasure and remembered with joy.
‘Gillian Mears writes like an angel.’ - Kate Veitch, The Age
‘… powerful and beautifully balanced.’ - Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser
The previous edition:
