For more than thirty years, Angela Gillespie has sent friends and family around the world an end-of-the-year letter titled 'Hello from the Gillespies'. It's always been cheery and full of good news. This year, Angela surprises herself – she tells the truth . . .
The Gillespies are far from the perfect family that Angela has made them out to be. Her husband is coping poorly with retirement. Her 32-year-old twins are having career meltdowns. Her third daughter, badly in debt, can't stop crying. And her ten-year-old son spends more time talking to his imaginary friend than to real ones.
Without Angela, the family would fall apart. But when Angela is taken from them in a most unexpected manner, the Gillespies pull together – and pull themselves together – in wonderfully surprising ways . . .
'If you need more proof what a superior storyteller this author is, here it is.' West Australian
entertaining and heart-warming tale.
From an ARC kindly provided by TheReadingRoom and Penguin.
Hello From The Gillespies is the 10th full-length novel by Australian author, Monica McInerney. The annual Christmas Letter: who hasn’t ever received one (or perhaps sent one themselves)? Angela Gillespie has been religiously sending one out every December 1st for 33 years. She regards her Christmas Letters as Historical Documents, a concept that is bears some merit. But for the Gillespies, this year has been (to borrow a famously royal term) an “annus horribilis”. A combination of factors (a five-month long headache, the impending return home of her twin daughters, the threatened stay of interfering Aunt Celia, the imminent hosting of two hundred neighbours for the district annual Woolshed party, the preamble to Christmas) coupled with an emergency trip to hospital to reunite her young son with his finger, mean that the version of Angela’s letter that is accidentally sent to one hundred email recipients is not her usual upbeat missive, but a searingly honest account of her family’s year. It is a letter that details the state of disarray of the lives of her four children, her worries about her husband and her doubts about her marriage, her opinion of her husband’s aunt, her frustrated pottery ambitions, her thoughts on the life she might have led.
McInerney gives the reader an original plot with a few twists, some of which are predictable, but this does not detract from the reading pleasure. Her characters are familiar and easily recognisable. Even the nasty ones are people we have all run into: many of us have an Aunt Celia or a Horrible Jane somewhere in our lives. And don’t we all wish we had a good friend like Joan? The dialogue is completely natural and McInerney conjures the feel of the dusty outback in all its moods with consummate ease. The story manages to touch on a myriad of topics: mining leases in rural lands; celebrity gossip; succession plans for farming families; celebrity scandals; novelty websites; internet scams; depression in country males; diversification of activities for extra income; family reunions; genealogy; the bond between twins; imaginary friends and fantasy lives. The pieces on amnesia and confabulation are interesting and informative.
Readers will find themselves constantly chuckling, often laughing out loud but occasionally also moved to tears or with a large lump in the throat. Reading this book in a public place may garner some funny looks. Fans of McInerney’s work know that stories about families are her strength; they will once again be delighted with this entertaining and heart-warming tale.
Marianne, 13/10/2014
