The Grapevine by Kate Kemp has a very interesting premise. While it centres around a crime – the murder of Antonio Marietti – (not a spoiler, it’s literally in the prologue) this isn’t actually the heart of the novel, as the killer isn’t the mystery, but it is the trigger for everything else. For the secrets and lies of a small neighbourhood that come pouring out.
Opening sentence: Naomi was on her knees in the bathroom, scrubbing the yellow and white chequerboard tiles.
Everybody needs good neighbours
Set during an oppressively hot summer in Australia in 1979, The Grapevine holds a magnifying glass up to a middle class road – Warrah Place – in an Australian suburb. Yes, I was picturing Ramsey Street while reading.
People act differently when they get into a group. Tammy has been through enough at school to know that was true.
We’re introduced to the blend of different characters that make up the six-ish houses on the road. These include couples Naomi and Richard, Lydia and Ursula and Peggy and Leslie and characters like Guangyu and Tammy that live with their families.
Ants everywhere
12-year-old Tammy is a key narrator in The Grapevine. It’s her childlike interpretation of the situation and her keenness to help find out what really happened that drive the story and pull the threads together. As tensions rise and everyone starts to suspect everyone else of the murder, the back stories of the characters are soon revealed, making this a riveting read.
‘It’s what I heard. On the grapevine.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Tammy. Was Peggy telling lies just to send Tammy off-track?
Shifts in the story had a unique break point – there was a splicing of sections taken from Tammy’s summer report on her science experiments with ants, providing a light-hearted metaphor for the brewing situation on Warrah Place.
The Grapevine is a coming-of-age story for Tammy – on the cusp of high-school, she grows and learns from what happens. A lot of the story is narrated by Tammy and while that gave a unique spin, I would have liked to have heard more from the other character’s POV, especially given the unexpected twist at the end.
Tammy had a vague sense that secrets acted as currency for intimacy.
Overall, I really like the tone of The Grapevine, Kate Kemp has a way of capturing the detail of each character’s secrets so it never feels like too much information through the story, there’s just enough so you get a sense of everyone and what’s making their world crumble behind closed doors. The Grapevine was a simmering-pot of a read, highly enjoyable.
