The Bookshop of Buried Pasts, by Sarah Clutton

Phyllida Banks has owned and run an antiquarian bookshop in a small town in the New South Wales southern highlands since the 1970s. In planning to leave the world, she sets her beloved granddaughter Lottie on a quest to find a mysterious figure from her past. This is an ambitious book that doesn’t succeed in any of the many things it tries to achieve. It touches on domestic violence; mother-child relationships; herbal lore and wise women; genealogy and DNA; and much more, doing none of the topics justice. The story is bookended by the voice of a bookshop, which is bizarre. The meat of it is told from multiple points of view; the most accessible that of Lottie in the present day. Unfortunately this is all too often interrupted by dips into the past – the 50s, 60s, 70s and 90s – overexplaining the secrets of Phyllida’s past with a plot that becomes increasingly ludicrous. Never mind, it’s all tied up neatly with a sickly pink bow at the end.