Published January 28, 2026
My thoughts:
This is a lovely story.
Struggled at first with the number of characters. Got a bit lost when the children had children of their own but what a beautiful story around a family home. Iluka reminds me of the Camomile lawn, I loved that movie and Iluka has the same feel. The trials of family life. A mother who walks away from her children , siblings who drift apart and a family home at the centre of it all.
I listened to this on audio and found it difficult to stayed focused with the voice at first. It was gentle and soft but monotone. However after a few chapters I found I warmed to the voice and the book started to flourish for me.
About
After their grandfather’s death, siblings Helen, Sylvie and Brendan, and Helen’s daughter, film student Tig, are gathered together at Iluka, a typical fibro beach house in a small town on the south coast. Iluka is the house they grew up in when their troubled mother ran away to the bright lights of the city, leaving their grandparents to raise them.
As they slowly clear the house for sale and relive various memories, they find a bundle of letters addressed to each of them from their missing mother, Marguerite, that were sent long after they’d been told she died.
Their world shifts on its axis, as the siblings begin to question everything they have been told. Why did their grandmother hide these letters? Was their grandfather complicit? And could the mother they thought they had lost still be alive?
Viewed through the unsparing eye of Tig’s camera, we watch a family first implode then reform around a new reality, a reality that brings with it profound change in the way they view themselves and each other.
