Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Kate McMahon, Echo Publishing, $29.99.
You will be addictively turning the pages of McMahon’s first novel. It grips, with vividly drawn characters, clever asides and a curiosity that makes you want to sprint to the end.
The storyline: two sisters one mistake, a thousand consequences.
It is told from the point of view of the sisters who are very different from each other.
Kate lives quietly in a high rise in Melbourne and immerses herself in academia. Her career as a model ended dramatically over a decade ago.
She has just started dating for the first time in many years after an event that changed the shape of her life on every level. She had been lonely for a long time. That is, until she meets friendly, comical Adam. However, something doesn’t quite add up. Kate begins to wonder if he’s too good to be true after he avoids her questions.
Bec, the younger sister, is on the verge of taking a path that will lead her away from her surgeon husband, three young children and comfortable life in a big house in Hobart. She lives the perfect life. That is, until she meets Ryan – 10 years her junior, wild and exciting, his arrival makes her question everything she thought she wanted.
The sisters are both a source of solace and resentment to each other. They never meant to be placed in a position where they were cast against each other in the ill-fated twofold of ‘the smart one’ and ‘the pretty one’. They didn’t mean for it to happen, but they let this define them more than they ever meant or wanted to.
The ‘mistake’ indicated by the title may well be attributed to a number of events in the characters’ past and present.
This is a engrossing tale of judging on first appearances – and sometimes bearing a feeling of resentment. You are drawn to swiftly uncover their untangling lives and exposures from the past.
