The Three of Us

Kim Lock

Pan Macmillan Australia

ISABN: 9781743538647

 

Description:

A life lived in the shadows. A love that should never have been hidden.

 

In the small town of Gawler, South Australia, the tang of cut grass and eucalyptus mingles on the warm air. The neat houses perched under the big gum trees on Church Street have been home to many over the years. Years of sprinklers stuttering over clipped lawns, children playing behind low brick walls. Family barbecues. Gossipy neighbours. Arguments. Accidents. Births, deaths, marriages. This ordinary street has seen it all.

 

Until the arrival of newlyweds Thomas and Elsie Mullet. And when one day Elsie spies a face in the window of the silent house next door, nothing will ever be ordinary again…

 

In Kim Lock’s third novel of what really goes on behind closed doors, she weaves the tale of three people with one big secret; a story of fifty years of friendship, betrayal, loss and laughter in a heart-warming depiction of love against the odds.

 

“With great care and compassion for the lives and losses of human beings, Kim Lock artfully weaves a moving and surprising story of the simple complexity of relationships and how they shape us” Sophie Green, author of The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club.

 

 

My View:

Subtle, gentle and topical, this book has something to offer all discerning readers. It is a powerful love story, an optimistic read. It is also a historical novel, an Australian study of domestic life in the conservative suburbs in the 1960’s; a time that saw the middle class boom and the slow beginnings of the equal rights movement for women. Fifty years on and the author reminds us that there are still some barriers that need to be broken.

 

Kim Lock has cannily crafted a narrative that subtly exposes our prejudices and highlights some of the historical social injustices that have impacted and influenced Australian society.

 

This book has all the emotions though is not in any way melodramatic, subtleness is its strength.

 

Thought provoking scenarios and engaging, realistic characters dictate that this is a novel that will be revered, enjoyed and cherished.