“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. Things we choose never to tell, pushed out of sight but never far from mind, and worried smooth by memory.”

An Afterlife For Rosemary Lamb is the first novel by Australian author, Louise Wolhuter. When twenty-year-old Rosemary Lamb and her husband Eddie move to the fringes of their coastal Queensland hometown, Winifred, a little place called Magpie Beach, there are two women living lonely existences nearby.

When Meg Cooper lost Sonny thirteen years earlier, she retreated into herself. She’s still grieving, just her and the cat keeping to their van and lean-tos and garden, except for her weekly shift at Winifred’s library. Without power, it’s a fairly primitive lifestyle but she survives on home grown fruit and vegetables. She watches with interest and a little apprehension as the Lambs erect their house.

On the other side of the headland, Englishwoman Lily tries to stay under the radar, determined to care for her husband herself, to uphold her wedding vow. But as Norman’s dementia worsens, it becomes more of a challenge. They’ve hidden themselves quite deliberately. She longs to be back in Yorkshire, but here in her isolation with the husband who has lost almost every trace of the man she married, she also craves company.

While Eddie, the butcher’s son who refused to follow in the family’s footsteps, carves exquisite rocking horses to sell, Rosemary works nights at the chocolate factory, and continues to wonder about the father her mother refused to identify. At Eddie’s urging, she insists that Meg joins her for the Tuesday cinema club.

After some months of weekly outings, they encounter Lily in the foyer of the Galaxy Cinema and, slowly, gradually, three women form a tentative friendship. For Lily it’s a break from Norman; for Meg, an antidote to her loneliness; and Rosemary enjoys the company of people who accept her as she is, without the judgement Winifred passes on her.

Winifred is a gossipy small town, and where there are mysteries and secrets held tight, there is speculation, rumour, “a thing tricky as butter to take back once spread”: Why did Sonny and Meg flee New Zealand? Where did Sonny go? Or was he dead, murdered by Meg, maybe? Who is Rosemary’s father really? And in the background of all that, the whole town wonders: who took nine-year-old Jessie Else back in February?

Just when Wolhuter has the reader feeling fairly cozy, she throws in torrential rain and flooding, and what that uncovers pulls the reader right out of their comfort zone with a couple of very dark and jaw-dropping turns.

This slow-burn story is told in three narrative strands, but one of those narrators is, perhaps, less reliable than the others. Wolhuter’s gorgeous descriptive prose really evokes her setting and the atmosphere, the smalltown mindset. Her characters are complex and intriguing, if not always likeable.

She has a marvellous turn of phrase: “Acting as if it was barely worth the bother was the coat she wore” and “‘We’re right, thanks,’ thrown over Lily’s shoulder like salt” and “Once he’d shuffled into the care of Eddie’s shadow, he settled like snow” are examples. “After Sonny left, I felt nothing for a long time but a cold vacuum of Doesn’t Matter” is another

Wolhuter gives her characters wise words and insightful observations: “Which is worse? I wonder still. To have love snatched away in one tight, violent second, or to have it dragged off slowly like a heavy carpet ruined in a storm?” This is a tale that really brings home to the reader how we only know a person from what they choose to present to us. Twisty, atmospheric and compelling, this is a brilliant debut novel.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Ultimo Press.