Review: Silver Linings


Katrina Nannestad has well and truly cemented her position as one of Australia’s most accomplished historical fiction writers with her latest novel, Silver Linings. Most of us are aware that clouds have them, silver linings that is, but what exactly do they mean and do they really exist? Nettie Sweeney sure thinks so.

Nettie’s story, set in the 1950s, reads as a middle grade novel yet champions Nettie Sweeney as the young protagonist who has just started primary school. Nettie’s tender years, beguiling naivety and childlike foibles are neatly offset however by the fact that she is the fourth daughter of a farming family with the ability to write and think beyond her years. Couple this with the assured determination of a person set on visiting the moon and you’ve got a character exploding with charm, wit and wonder. In short, Nettie is larger-than-life adorbs! Nettie’s singular desire is for a mother to love and cuddle having lost hers at birth.

Her dreams come true in the shape of Alice, a woman who reignites the light in her father, Snow’s, life and fills Nettie’s with the warm gentle loving glow she has always longed for. Life on the Sweeny place settles into a rugged yet reassuring routine for them all. Cows are milked daily, school is endured, friendships ebb and flow like capricious breezes. Just when Nettie thinks life couldn’t get any better it does in the shape of a baby brother named, Billy; who’s better than a piglet! Even the horrid sharp, prickly bits of her despised Aunty Edith soften under Billy’s gaze. Then tragedy strikes and every ounce of loveliness is sucked into a vortex of despair, sadness and depression.

A forlorn and impenetrable silence suffocates the Sweeny household. To Nettie, it feels as though every skerrick of happiness has been removed so that even memories of better times are unreachable. Nettie’s frustration and anguish spill into action as her innocent aspirations result in another near tragic set of circumstances. She is again overcome. How can one little girl’s desire to instal happiness into her home overcome the incredible magnitude of loss and grief?

Silver Linings, is a heart tugging, superbly rendered exploration of family ties, love, pain, perseverance and the forces of nature set against a backdrop of Coronation festivities and post war vigour. For me, it resounds of the simplicity and wholesomeness of country life reminding me of my grandparents’ farm and the day-to-day burdens that necessitated survival. Every morning, rain hail or shine, my grandad would trudge up hill to the bails to hand-milk the house cows, just like Nettie’s father and sisters. Hardships were the daily de rigueur of farming life but the rewards were equally as encompassing.

Readers needn’t be from a rural background though to fully enjoy the humour and disasters that make up Nettie’s world. This novel pulses with at least one recognisable emotion: love. It’s a celebration of tenacity and friendships, of family bonds and of life, in all its forms including death. It reminds us that ‘feeling’ is okay. We are allowed to laugh out loud, so too should we be able to cry out loud with equal voracity. In fact, we might be a whole lot better off for allowing ourselves the freedom of emotional expression.

Thank you, Nettie, for indulging us with your company and permitting us insight into a childhood that is full of simple sweetness and perfect logic. Yours is a story that I know will appeal to youngsters and resonate with older people, like me, who eventually realise that it is not the age of a person that matters but the size of their character and intestinal fortitude that counts. And that silver linings – those wonderful serendipitous, joyful elements of life – can be found anywhere at any moment, disguised as anything. Beautiful.

Title:  Silver Linings
Author:  Katrina Nannestad
Illustrator:  Astrid Hicks
Publisher:  HarperCollins, $19.99
Publication Date:  1 November 2023
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780733342257
For ages:  11+
Type:  Middle Grade Novel for Younger Readers

Buy the Book: HarperCollins, Booktopia

 

 

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