The well-trodden road of marriage in contemporary Australian society (and throughout the modern world at large) is invariably intricately nuanced and defiantly complex in nature. Additionally, this time honoured institution is frequently tenuous and fraught. In short, the outer glow that many marriages project is often deceptive in nature.
Such truths ricochet consistently and at times alarmingly throughout highly successful Australian author, Sally Hepworth’s, latest stellar and illuminating novel, The Soulmate.
In this impeccable read, Sally shines a wise and at-times cautionary light on a present-day marriage of a couple who are audaciously privileged and seemingly completely ‘together’ in themselves, their relationship and their family dynamics.
Gabe (a stay-at-home dad) and Pippa (a wills and estates lawyer) are a young couple, full of idealism (or are they?) and aspirations, living ‘The Great Australian Dream’. Eighteen months previously, they have relocated from the bustling and frenetic metropolis of Melbourne to the highly sought after coastal locale of Portsea. In this enviably sandy, salty, soothing (or is it?), hip and eclectic enclave of those (including Pippa’s parents, her sister Kat and Kat’s partner, Mei) choosing to live in paradise by the sea, Gabe and Pippa reside in a cliff-top beach house with their two pre-school age daughters, Freya and Asha.
Gabe and Pippa have had their fair share of intractable problems (some minute and others life-altering). Pippa has suffered debilitating postnatal depression. And, from the early throes of their relationship, Pippa noticed that Gabe “got distracted easily. He could do big talk, but not small talk. He didn’t sleep…or only slept. He was all or nothing”. Gabe has at one stage held down five jobs in a year, before working for the formidable business tycoon and “media mogul”, Max Cameron, in Max’s company, NewZ. After a time working in “investor relations”, Gabe has been sacked.
Gabe, to outsiders, appears to be the epitome of a dream husband. A keen surfer and demonstrably caring husband and father, Gabe “wakes up looking like Chris Hemsworth”, Pippa having been asked “How’d you land him?”.
Gabe’s undeniable ‘gift’ is that he has the ability to ‘talk down’ people who are on the verge of jumping off “The Drop’, the cliff near the Gerard’s house. Gabe has talked down seven people from taking their lives since he and his family moved to Portsea.
When late one murky (as far as weather goes), yet otherwise unobtrusive afternoon, Gabe and Pippa, through the window of their house, see a woman perilously close to the edge of The Drop. Gabe goes out to talk to her, however she ends up going over the edge.
Unsettlingly for Pippa, she looks up to see that, after the woman has gone over the cliff, Gabe is standing with “His arms outstretched, palms facing the empty air”. Why does Pippa feel she can not tell the police this fact?
Who was the woman who Gabe didn’t get to “save”? A woman who, Gabe says, did not say her name. What corrosive secrets lay dormant and hidden (for a time anyway) in Gabe’s and Pippa’s lives? What other marriage in the book is embedded with deceit? Why did Pippa’s parents, as well as Kat and Mei, move to Portsea to live near Pippa and her family? Why has Max Cameron shown such an interest in Gabe? Who is one of the novel’s narrator’s, Amanda?
The twists and turns in The Soulmate are many, and stun and shock the reader in equal measure. Once again, Sally has delivered a searingly intelligent, well structured and character driven story that will stay with you long after the final word has been read.
Sally has wonderful and perceptive insight into what makes some of the human race tick (and it’s not always pretty). This book had me turning the pages faster and faster, the deeper into the novel I got.
Bravo Sally! The Soulmate, as all of Sally’s books have, has and will continue to be read by a wide audience worldwide. The Soulmate is a sterling read.
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