Hold (Kirsten Tranter, Fourth Estate)

Hold is Kirsten Tranter’s third novel and like her second, A Common Loss, it deals with the grief of unexpectedly losing a loved one and the strange places that grief can take us. Shelley’s partner Conrad dies in a surfing accident and now, three years on, she has moved into a terrace house with her new partner David, playing reluctant step-mum to David’s teenage daughter and working from home as a designer for a publishing house. Shelley has not simply moved on though; she sees Conrad in strangers, she no longer swims or paints, and in the lead-up to the anniversary of Conrad’s death, she discovers a hidden room behind a closet. As her engagement with this captivating room—and the erotic freedom and private space that it represents—increases, she becomes embroiled with the artists next door, who share a wall and are dealing with their own form of grief. Striking gothic imagery collides with the glitz of Sydney’s wealthy beach suburbs in this enchanting narrative. As Shelley finds herself struggling to stay connected to the people left in her life—and that life becomes more and more dreamlike—letting go might actually be a way forward. Hold contains a strong sense of its Sydney setting and will appeal to readers who enjoy their fiction with an emotional complexity and literary bent.

Portia Lindsay is general manager for Seizure Online and a former bookseller

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