The Hiding Place (Kate Mildenhall, Scribner)

No stranger to the literary scene, Kate Mildenhall (The Mother Fault, Skylarking, The Hummingbird Effect) returns with The Hiding Place, an eminently readable and vividly imagined novel. Four families seeking a peaceful refuge from their bustling city lives pool their resources to purchase a remote bush block with a mysterious past. They gather for an inaugural working weekend – clearing blackberries and building toilets – while simultaneously wrangling their children. The adults inevitably bring emotional baggage with them: tensions, relationship issues, worries and secrets. As disasters accumulate and moral dilemmas intensify, the adults are forced to confront the limits of their values. What happens when desperation takes hold? Ultimately, and ironically, the children emerge as the foil to the adults’ behaviour. With a focus on integrity and honesty, Mildenhall has created a down-to-earth and varied crew of characters and a strong sense of place. Bubbling underneath this drama-driven narrative is a rich river of secondary themes including parenting, neurodivergence, modern life pressures, urban and rural politics, corporatised science, climate change and more. Billed as The White Lotus meets The Slap, a comparison that rings true, The Hiding Place would translate well onto screen and confidently sits alongside suspenseful novels that explore society and the human psyche, including those by Liane Moriarty, Sally Hepworth and Heather Rose.  

Books+Publishing reviewer: Joanne Shiells is an English teacher and former editor of Books+Publishing. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

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