Things I Need You to Know (Mark Lamprell, Text)

Birdie’s world is torn asunder when Ned, her husband and the father of their five daughters, dies unceremoniously of stomach cancer. In a reversal of stereotypical gender roles, Birdie was the primary breadwinner and Ned was the stay-at-home parent, adored by his progeny and community alike. As Birdie sleepwalks through her newfound responsibilities, cloaked in grief, things begin to go startlingly wrong, and mishap upon mishap of comedic proportions rock the household, before matters take a more sinister turn. With a title inspired by the compendium Ned leaves behind for Birdie—viewed uncharitably at first as a ‘catalogue of mundane domesticity’ before she begins to see it as a ‘bible of fatherhood aching with care’—Things I Need You to Know is a biting, uproarious portrait of domesticity in disarray, intractable grief, love and betrayal, motherhood, and the long shadow cast by family legacies. Every character in Mark Lamprell’s latest novel is sharply realised, from Birdie’s eight-year-old twins Marina and Madeline to her poisonous celebrity mother Dawn and colleague-turned-confidante Bryce. A multilayered narrative that traverses Birdie’s past and present to paint a complex picture of unresolved trauma, Things I Need You to Know dramatically switches gears in the final chapters, taking the reader somewhere far darker and pleasingly unexpected. It will appeal to readers of Toni Jordan, Sally Hepworth and Tracy Farr.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Sonia Nair is a Melbourne-based writer and critic. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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