Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Susan Francis, Allen & Unwin, $29.99.
This extraordinary memoir about secrets pulsates through your being as you, too, feel life’s shocking twists and the unconditional love being experienced by Susan Hull.
She honestly tells it like it is: “how could I write about the importance of truth and not tell the whole truth myself?” Feeling empathy is a natural progression.
Having spent 20 years looking for her biological parents, 52-year-old Hull unexpectedly meets the great love of her life – a gold miner named Wayne Francis – a gentle giant of a man, who promises Susan the world. So, they give up their jobs, sell everything they own, get married and leave to start a new life in the romantic city of Granada.
Theirs is an unbelievable adventure. In love, and enthralled by the splendour of a European springtime, the pair treasure every moment together. “I decided I was ready to embrace the mantra he’s been repeating to me all along: the past is insignificant, live in the moment, there is only now”.
Their life in Spain was the stuff of their dreams, but tragedy strikes, and then nothing seems tangible.
A sense of desolation is obvious and we endure the repercussions alongside Susan. “Hours and hours follow and I’m an aimless stranger upon a floating landscape. I feel like I exist on a piece of riftwood in a vast ocean. This place is flat … then suddenly the universe collapses. I am going to suffocate.” Something dreadful, incomprehensible has happened to her. A massive shift has occurred in her life.
Spellbinding, sincere and extraordinarily honest, Susan Francis’ The Love that Remains explores unreserved love and the lies we tell to protect our happiness.
She felt devastated by the truest and most bitter realisation of her life. Both the nightmare and despair are palpitating.
