"This is a gorgeous, delicately surprising piece of writing. . . .
It's like spirit photography, all fuzzy outlines and unaccountable
light: a snapshot of something that may or may not exist." --Terrence
Rafferty, The New York Times Book Review
When Frances met Charlie at a party in Melbourne, he was married with a
young son. Now that the couple has moved to subtropical Sydney, a lusher
and more chaotic city, Frances has an unshakable sense that the world
has tipped on its axis. Everything seems alien, and exotic--and Frances
is haunted by the unknowability of Charlie's previous life. A young art
historian studying the objects in paintings--the material world--Frances
takes mind-clearing walks around her neighborhood with her dog. Behind
the fence of one garden, she thinks she sees a woman in an old-fashioned
gown, but something is not right. It's as if the garden exists in a
vacuum suspended in time, at an angle to life.
Springtime is a ghost story that doesn't conform to the genre's
traditions of dark and stormy nights, graveyards and ruins. It breaks
new ground by unfolding in sunny, suburban Australia, and the realism of
the characters and events make the story's ambiguities and eeriness all
the more disquieting. The richness of observation here is immediately
recognizable as Michelle de Kretser's, a writer who has been praised by
Hilary Mantel as a master of the sharp, almost hallucinatory detail.
