Blue Hour

Sarah Schmidt

From Shelf: All Time Favourites.

From the Women's Prize longlisted author of SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE comes a masterful reworking of the road novel into a portrait of the complex relationship between mothers and daughters

She thinks of blue mountain, her favourite place. 'We're going somewhere where we can be safe. We never have to come back here.' As the rest of the world lies sleeping, Eleanor straps her infant daughter, Amy, into the back of her car. This is the moment she knew must come, when they will walk out on her husband Leon and a marriage in ruins since his return from Vietnam. Together, she and Amy will journey to blue mountain, a place of enchantment and refuge that lit up Eleanor's childhood.As the car eats up the miles, so Eleanor's mind dives back into her fractured relationship with her mother, Kitty. Kitty who asked for so much from life, from love, from family. Kitty who had battled so hard to prise her husband George out of the grip of war. Kitty, whose disapproving voice rings so loud in Eleanor's head.Tense, visceral, glittering, it is a masterful return to fiction from the author of the acclaimed See What I Have Done.