(Allen & Unwin, $32.99)
How could anyone resist a book with this cover? That beautiful combination of coloured wool, the illustrated flowers in the bottom corner and the hint of lacy doily at the top all add up, in my mind, to suggest something simple but bright and thoroughly comforting. A proper afternoon tea, perhaps, with tea in a pot and homemade custard squares.
oh, yum!
Miranda Sinclair, otherwise known as Moss, is having a quarter-life crisis and so goes to the seemingly unexciting (and possibly misnamed) Australian town of opportunity to find her father Finn; a man she has never met and who has hardly thought of her since she was conceived.
Naturally, he’s not exactly turning cartwheels when she shows up at his door. The lonely mathematician is more reclusive than rude however, so he installs his daughter with his ageing neighbour who has an empty spare room.
As Moss starts to grow on the people of opportunity, their secrets begin to slip out. old ors Pargetter, for example, knits tea cosies for the United Nations and talks to her dog because her husband never came back from the war and she doesn’t know what happened to her baby.
Her silly nephew George Sandilands, on the other hand, dreams of building a great galah in honour of his father, a tireless bully who long held his lonely son in his thrall. And then there’s lonely, tortured Finn himself, who has tried everything – including an extended stint in a monastery – to fix up the haunting mistake of his wasted past, all to no avail.
With her own guilty conscience to assuage, Moss attempts to right what wrongs she can manage with wildly unpredictable results. First-time novelist Tess Evans ties all these loose ends together with a happy ending that had me crying tears of hope that sometimes all the world really needs are a few true hearts and a nice cup of tea. Simple, but bright and thoroughly comforting. oh, yum!
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