1936: At nineteen, Kitty was ready to leave behind the stifling control of her parents and all those constantly telling her how to live her life. Work at the Wintonvale Repatriation Hospital was her escape and a chance to be someone else. Then she met soldier George Turner – and she heard her mother’s voice in her ear, warning of danger, of being that girl. Kitty told herself if she ever had her own daughter, she’d never control her.
1973: Growing up, Eleanor’s home was strained by sorrow and the echoes of war that silenced her parents. And always her mother, Kitty’s, bitterness, twisting and poisoning everything she touched. She thought she knew what made her parents this way… but Eleanor would never know all her mother’s secrets.
The demands of marriage, motherhood and looking after her daughter while her husband, Leon, is in Vietnam lay claim to Eleanor’s days. Nature, embracing curiosity and not being like her mother is Eleanor’s solace. But they are not enough when Leon’s darkness overwhelms. Both he and her mother leave their mark and use Eleanor for their own ends. Afraid, unsure and alone, Eleanor will be driven to erase her mother’s voice in her head. But the question remains: can she bear the burden of her own secrets?
Sarah Schmidt is a librarian and novelist whose 2018 debut, See What I Have Done, was a literary award-winner. It took out the ABIA Literary Fiction Award and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018. It was a gritty gothic retelling of the case of Lizzie Borden and her murdered parents. Schmidt’s eagerly awaited second novel is once again a dark and at times disturbing read from this talented writer.
Vivid, deeply affecting and confronting, Blue Hour explores the beauty and violence in the world. Powerfully magnifying the fractures between a mother and a daughter, it reveals the brutal cost when we allow grief and trauma to reach down generations. The novel moves back and forth between the stories of Kitty and her daughter Eleanor, as they are at different ages and stages of their lives. Schmidt taps into the mother-daughter relationship in a way I have rarely read before – it is brutally honest and incisive.
Blue Hour might leave you reeling, but it is without a doubt one of the most thought-provoking novels I have read in a while. Fans of compelling literary fiction can’t go past this – Schmidt is an incredible Australian writer.
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