Publisher: 28th April 2023 by HarperCollins Australia
Pages: 284 pages
Genre: contemporary, drama
Rating: 3 cups
Synopsis:
Layla Byrnes is exhausted. She's juggling a demanding job as an anaesthetist, a disintegrating marriage, her young kids, and a needy lover. And most particularly she's managing her histrionically unstable mother, who repeatedly threatens to kill herself.
But this year, it's different. When her mother rings just before Christmas, she doesn't follow the usual script. Instead, she tells Layla that there's something she needs to tell her about her much-loved father. In response, Layla drops everything to rush to her childhood home on the wild west coast of Tasmania. She's determined to finally confront her mother - and find out what really happened to her father - and lay some demons to rest.
The Heart is a Star is an engrossing, lyrical and powerfully absorbing novel about the complicated and beautiful messiness of midlife; about the ways in which we navigate an intricate, complicated world; and about how we can uncover our true selves when we are forced to face the myths that make us.
My Thoughts
The Heart is a Star appealed to me as it promised what many face in real life - daily struggles for a woman of a certain age. Layla is exhausted and is feeling the strain from work and family demands. She has a troubled mother and when she calls threatening to harm herself and claiming there are things she needs to tell her about her father, Layla jumps on a plane to go and see her.
‘… at night, when Dad held our hands and walked us the fifty paces to the cliff edge, he'd look up at the dome of constellations above us and say, 'I've never seen the stars so bright than they are here. There are two things in this world you can trust, girls: me and the constancy of those stars.’
Firstly, there is much going on in this book with a number of heavy topics, therefore, it was hard to devote the necessary time to do each of them justice. Layla has work troubles, her marriage is in crisis, her young children need her, she is having an affair, her family (mother and sister) are estranged with her mother threatening self harm; and finally, what is the mystery surrounding her father’s death? Can you see what I mean? There is a lot going on.
‘… as the children began to grow up and need me less, I remembered that I was a person, with desires and passions and interests and a career that I'd spent a lifetime building.’
This led me to be rather conflicted about this book. Whilst I appreciate what the author was trying to do, scaling it back somewhat might have allowed for further development of certain issues. Whether it had been family dysfunction or the role of women or personally my preferred theme, the long held family secret regarding her father and their initial move to Tasmania, time would have been better spent in my opinion developing a singular theme.
‘We live a double life. The outer life, which is the one we observe at airports and across dinner tables, at school pick-ups and basketball practice. And then, the one beneath. The secret, passionate, inside-our-skin lives; the intense life that no one else sees.’
The Heart is a Star is a slow burn tale that held potential. At its heart I felt it was about family and the fallout of family secrets being kept. Although others may feel they are protecting those they love and care for by hiding the truth, the damage can be unequivocal when finally they are revealed.
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the author in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.
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