Starting this week, and each first and third Saturday afterwards until the end of the year, I’ll be doing a fresh bingo card, hopefully with different books to the last one. Having finished half way through the year, I decided to fill up another card, and this time, stretch it out a big more over six months. So even though I have three ticked off already, I’m starting with one square.

A book written by someone under thirty: The Yellow House by Emily O’Grady – AWW2018

Emily O’Grady’s book filled square four of row five across, and square five of row four down – a book written by someone under thirty and is also one of my reads for the 2018 Australian Women Writer’s Challenge, where I met Theresa Smith Amanda Barrett, and signed up to do this book bingo with them over the course of the year.

The Yellow House by Emily O’Grady revolves around the idea of family legacy, and whether the sins of the father, or in Cub’s case, the grandfather, should be the burden of those left behind. It questions whether the violence committed by a family member and its lasting impact on the family – how they behave, how they see themselves, how their community sees them and whether or not they have a genetic predisposition to the same tendencies – the nature versus nurture debate. For Cub, this world is seen through her ten year old eyes – at first as something she is intrigued by, but with the arrival of her cousin, Tilly, and a new friend of her older brother’s – will Cub learn that family legacy is not what defines her?

Taking on the topic of serial killers and the legacy they leave behind, Emily O’Grady has created a thought-provoking novel, which, when seen through the eyes of a child who has never been told anything about her family history, is the only daughter and is very inquisitive, but often told off, is rather sobering, especially as there is always a feeling that something has to go wrong, someone has to go missing and that new friend of Cub’s older brother gives off a sense of dread and unease that doesn’t leave at all, even after the novel ends in a way that is both conclusive and at the same time, inconclusive, with hints that what Cub knows or thinks she knows will never come to light.

My next book bingo with Theresa and Amanda (Mrs B) will appear on the 30th of June.