When Paulina dies mid-dance, she leaves 12-year-old Zav and 7-year-old Sealie with their loving but unstable father, Hal. The grieving family decides to plant a tree in her memory - a magnolia which, growing along with the children, offers a special place where secrets are whispered and feelings can be confessed.
But as the memory tree grows, Hal, bereft, and increasingly suspicious of the world, turns to his own brand of salvation to make sense of the voices that bewilder and torment him. Mrs Mac, housekeeper and second mother since Paulina's death, cooks, cleans, loves and worries about her 'family'. She is even more concerned when Hal brings a larger-than-life stranger to the house for a beer; but Pastor Moses B. Washbourne, founder of the Church of the Divine Conflagration, ex-sergeant of the US Army, soon becomes part of the family, with surprising and far-reaching consequences.
As the seasons pass, Sealie blossoms into young woman, the apple of Hal's eye while Zav, having spent his childhood quietly trying to win his father's lost attention, is conscripted for duty in Vietnam.
And all the while, the voices continue to murmur poisonous words to Hal who knows he must keep them hidden . . . until he is persuaded into the most tragic of acts.
Written with humour and compassion, The Memory Tree is a poignant and compelling story of love, loyalty, grief and forgiveness.
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The Memory Tree is the second novel by Australian author, Tess Evans. It is the late 1950s in the rural Victorian town of Yarra Falls. When ballerina Paulina Rodriguez suddenly dies, mid-dance, her family are devastated. Seven-year-old Sealie (Selina) and twelve-year-old Zav (Xavier) are lovingly cared for by the family’s housekeeper, Mrs Mac (Eileen McLennon). But, suddenly a widower, Hal (Heraldo) is finding it hard to cope without the love of his life.
Although they plant a magnolia tree together in her memory, Hal’s moods swing wildly, and it is often only Sealie who can bring him some measure of calm. Then he meets Godown Moses (former US Sergeant Moses B. Washbourne), Pastor of the Church of the Divine Conflagration. Convinced that this larger-than-life black man can help him find the answers he needs in the scriptures, Hal brings him home to join the family.
Evans chooses Hal’s granddaughter, Grace to narrate the events that bring joy, sorrow and tragedy to this family. As these are gradually revealed, Evans paints a vivid picture of various mental illnesses: Depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Paranoid Delusions and Bipolar Disorder are very well described. The Vietnam War, psychiatric hospitals, deinstitutionalisation of patients and dreams unrealised also feature.
This novel has a plot that is not predictable from the cover blurb; the characters are easy to love and care about; the prose is often beautiful and evocative: “He held back on the power of his voice when he sang to me and it had a sweetness then, that fell softly on my ears” and “…she learned to cope. She did this by packing her feelings out of sight, the way she did the objects in the boxes that crowded the room at the top of the stairs. In the attic of her mind lay a box into which she folded and lay the terrible, wrenching loss of her dream of the ballet” are just two examples.
While there is much sadness in this novel (readers will need plenty of tissues for the last chapters), there are also laugh out loud moments, and Hal’s limericks for his family are a true delight. This is a novel about love and loyalty, about regret (“’If’ is such a little word, but it punches way above its weight”), about sorrow and compassion. Readers who enjoyed “Book of Lost Threads” will not be disappointed in this second offering from Tess Evans. This moving story will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.
Marianne, 06/01/2015
