This charming debut follows a middle-aged woman who is liberated after her famous husband dies, in a crowded field of new books unpicking heterosexual marriage
en Black is dead. Even his family refers to him in death as Ken Black, artist. He was a great Australian painter and he was also a complete shit. Everybody says so. His widow Leila Whittaker, who is the narrator of Kylie Mirmohamadi’s debut novel, Diving, Falling, is loquacious about the shortcomings of Ken Black, artist. Her best friend Nessa never liked him; her kids, Sebastian and Otis, still live in the shadow of their father. And now this colossus of a man is dead.
Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning As Leila lets loose, we also come to understand, by way of glances and asides, the contradictions of her marriage. Life after Ken might have been eased by material privilege, but the loss she has to process is complex. Along with Ken’s tenderness as a father and husband, she recalls “the drunken rages, the verbal abuse, the fists, not through the walls, which were made of concrete, but occasionally on the body of the son who was the focus of all his fierce violent pride”.
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