Grace’s Table (Sally Piper, UQP)

This beguiling novel is set at a pivotal moment in the life of Grace, an Australian woman about to turn 70. She is determined to mark this moment with an old-fashioned family dinner and we meet her as she is preparing the food, assisted by her spiky daughter Susan. As a 70-year-old man, I doubted my ability to become involved in this tale. I could not have been more wrong. The author uses the meal—preparation, serving, eating and aftermath—as a device within which to tell Grace’s story. From her rebellious childhood, then a marriage that turns depressingly sour, through family tensions and a huge, unspoken tragedy, through friendships and enmities, we are given a portrait of a family that slowly fractures yet will still come together for occasions like Grace’s 70th. The last pages of the book, in which the old tragedy is revealed to the reader and the family finally faces it and starts to deal with it as adults, are confronting yet uplifting. Grace’s Table is involving, moving, amusing and genuinely entertaining. I kept wanting to introduce Grace to Mr Wigg (Inga Simpson’s stubborn farmer from her recent eponymous novel). They have much in common and would make a feisty, formidable team.

Max Oliver has just retired after 55 years in the book trade

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Category: Reviews