Title: Wildflowers

Author: Peggy Frew

Publisher: Allen & Unwin, 2022; RRP: $32.99

Wildflowers is Peggy Frew’s fourth novel. Her first novel was House of Sticks. Her second, Hope Farm, was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Award and won the Barbara Jeffries Award.  Islands, her third book, was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Peggy has published shorter works in various writing magazines. Peggy is also a musician and is a member of Melbourne-based band Art of Fighting.

Wildflowers is a rapidly moving novel about a family of three sisters: Meg, Nina, and Amber. The story is told from the perspective of Nina. Nina’s parents, Gwen and Robert, play shadowy roles, to the extent that the reader may judge them as ineffectual parents to their three very different daughters.

Amber, the youngest sibling, outshines them all and at an incredibly early age looks set to become a successful actor. A mysterious incident ends her hopes and dreams, and she spirals into life as an addict. Nina quietly displays her own insecurities and leads a promiscuous life that results in a psychological struggle of her own. Meg, a health professional and the eldest of the sisters, is the strong and dependable one, who having had her own heartbreaks is determined to manage her families’ frailties and, as is her nature, acts as rescuer and advisor for her family.

Meg decides that Amber needs dedicated support and intervention, and she engages Nina who reluctantly agrees to be part of the strategy. The solution involves a stay in a remote homestead in North Queensland and an action plan that doesn’t necessarily go according to plan. It is during this time that the writer’s diligence regarding the personal and distinctive character styles and personalities becomes apparent as what they are attempting falls into torrid and at times frightening disarray.

Read an interview with Peggy Frew

@ the age

The characters drill their existence into the reader’s memory as the three sisters and their parents move between care, love, despair, dysfunction and frustration. There is an elevated level of emotional energy throughout the story and the issues of love, responsibility and control become challenging. Does a person have the right to take control of a situation for another, claiming it’s for their own good? This is the central theme, one that is dealt with in a daring and at times alarming manner. It raises questions regarding the ethics of taking over another person’s life, albeit temporarily, against their will, and the extreme actions that desperate family members can resort to.  

Wildflowers is intriguing and at times breathtaking, but in brilliant Peggy Frew style, she carries the reader along in total engagement with both story and the characters. The book is a hard one to forget.

Reviewed by: Heather Whitford Roche

Ballarat Writers Book Review Group, Sept 2022

Review copy provided by the publisher