The House on the Hill
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The third memoir from the author of bestsellers Salvation Creek and The House at Salvation Creek.
The third memoir from the author of bestsellers Salvation Creek and The House at Salvation Creek.
In The House on the Hill, Susan Duncan reaches an age where there’s no point in sweating long-term ramifications. There aren’t any. This new understanding delivers an unexpected bonus – the emotional freedom and moral clarity to admit to hidden and often fiendish facts of ageing and, ultimately, the find ways to embrace them.
This, in turn, unleashes an overwhelming desire to confront her intractable 95-year-old mother with the dreadful secrets of the past before it is too late, no matter the consequences. It is the not-knowing, she says, that does untold damage.
Interwoven with stories from the land – building a sustainable eco-house on the mid-coast of New South Wales with her engineer husband, Bob, and grappling with white-eyed roans, dogs, bawling cattle markets, droughts and flooding rains, not to mention blunt-speaking locals – this is a book about a mother and daughter coming to terms, however uneasy, with the awful forces that shaped their relationship.
As the inconstancies of age slow her down, Susan Duncan writes with honesty about discovery and forgiveness, and what it takes to rework shrinking boundaries into a new and rich life.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Susan Duncan’s third memoir opens with the Australian journalist’s would-be retirement and her transition into a comfortable routine with her second husband. But seismic shifts await, including an unexpected move, the casual brutality of close family members and ongoing problems with Duncan’s nonagenarian mother. At once harrowing and heartening, The House on the Hill is wincingly beautiful. It unpacks the task of facing one’s future, which can be terrifying at any age.
