AustLit

'You can do one night, Jo reminds herself as she follows five women into the Australian bush.

'Where are they going to sleep? And pee?

'Jo probably should have let her husband Frank know. Just in case. Because you never know what can happen in the wild.

***

'While on her three-month marriage-and-motherhood sabbatical in the country, Jo bumps into an old friend Fiona who invites her on a 'sacred', silent walk to mark her 57th birthday - the first since her husband Ben died.

'The last thing Jo wants is to share anything about herself - these are Fiona's friends, not hers. And what's she going to say? That her young adult children have made life choices she doesn't understand? That she has no idea who she is anymore? That everything is falling apart - even her happy marriage to Frank?

'But the unexpected intrusion of a stranger into their secret location unleashes powerful and conflicting emotions in each woman, provoking conversations and confidences that stray into the shadowlands of motherhood, the mysteries of midlife, the future of monogamy and mother Earth.

'Under the canopy of the open night sky, around a small, tended fire, the women share wise counsel, spill their secrets and offer up their stories, each exposing corners of truth the others need to hear.

'Unbecoming is a funny, heartbreaking and provocative homage to the midlife unravelling as women on the brink of elderhood speak honestly about their lives and wonder what the hell to do with vaginas that are not ready to be put out to pasture just yet.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'It's been ages since Jo, Helen, Ereka and CJ first became friends through their mothers' group-back then, life revolved around their small children. Now their kids are pre-teens and teenagers with attitudes, iPods and raging hormones, and life is feeling emptier for some mothers, more liberating for others.

'While away together in an old country house with a couple of new friends and plenty of wine and food, it's not long before the women are discussing men, marriage and parenting, sharing intimacies and confiding vulnerabilities. Friendships are put on the line as the bonds between them are tested and the weekend takes some unexpected turns.

'Picking up where the international bestseller Secret Mothers' Business left off, The Reunion is an insightful, funny and often biting novel about the challenges women face as their bodies change, dreams fade and kids grow up. Ultimately it explores what it means to be a good friend, a good person and a good mother-and suggests that all love is about learning to let go.' (Publisher's blurb)

''And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.'

'Faith isn't so different from most women her age; She's thirty-two, single, has the requisite dysfunctional family, an even more dysfunctional best friend, a busy and challenging job, and in her weaker moments dreams of perhaps some day meeting a man that will ignite her senses and take her away from all this.

'The trouble is, while she aches to see the good in the world, Faith is constantly confronted by the bad. After having heard one too many love-gone-wrong stories and being left feeling helpless in the aftermath of yet another woman fleeing yet another violent man, Faith, a legal counsellor in a women's crisis centre, has just about given up. Not just on the big ideas like hope, love and trust, but even on the chance of getting a decent haircut or meeting an ordinary, non-psychotic, bloke.

'One night a twist of fate finds Faith wringing out years of unshed tears in a suburban veterinary clinic. It is a night that will slowly change the way Faith sees herself and that will allow her to finally understand what she has always needed to know: that before you can save others you have to save yourself.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Themes of forbidden love, family conflict, and female liberation are woven together in this dramatic story of family secrets and domestic wars that still rage in a suburban Johannesburg family three generations after fleeing European anti-Semitism in the 1920s. '  (Publication abstract)