S&S Bundyi

Book title: Secrets by Judi Morison

Reviewer: Tina Faulk 

Ruth has kept her secrets hidden for sixty years; now she’s forced to give them up to her daughters and grandchildren. Her story is also Australia’s story, the darkness beneath the comforting reassurance of the ‘Lucky Country’. Her daughters are divided in their opinions, and Ruth’s grandson is doing time on drug charges; she must, at last, tell secrets that she had held for so long.

Secrets is about family secrets, ones that Ruth, the matriarch of the family, holds tightly to until she finally knows she has to relinquish them. It’s a very human story, of an unloved child growing up among secrets that she must painfully discover, and at last, have the courage to reveal. It’s a heartwarming read, with dark undertones, which might make readers of an older generation, like this reviewer, think about, or remember, the unspoken social rules that shaped their lives, for better or worse. Morison skewers the cruelty and social dislocation of 1950s Queensland, as well as the more accommodating, but no less socially blinkered, lives of those in New South Wales.

​​‘Paint crumbling to talcum on its faded white weatherboards, Cora shone stark beside the kunzeas that already pressed their pink-mauve flowers against its verandah. Along the range north and south, valleys cupped morning cloud, and from Ruth’s garden below, a pied currawong called.’

Author of Secrets, Judi Morison, can magic up pictures of an Australian landscape to grab your heart. Morison, of Gamilaroi and Celtic heritage, living on Gumbaynggirr country, writes with heartwarming authenticity on some of the hardest topics Australians now face, now and into the future; race relations and family history, and her research is impeccable. You’ll walk with Ruth, Em, Dawn and Mish through the hardest times in their lives.

Secrets is a truly confronting, tear-inducing story of indomitable resilience through three generations and three women, mostly against the odds.

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Reviewer’s bio:

Christina Faulk was born in Sri Lanka and started as a cadet-journalist on the Courier Mail in Queensland. Her real writing love has been her lovingly-researched novel or non-fiction project. Her 2014 memoir about her childhood in Sri Lanka 'The Island of Singing Fish' (available on Amazon) sold out in Colombo bookshops and online, and was snapped up by diaspora readers in Australia, US, UK and Europe.