I have seen this book across my social media on many occasions and was glad to be given the opportunity to read a copy of it recently.
The story centres around Annie, who is married to Tom, and has a six-year-old daughter named Pip.
A year ago, a bushfire ripped through the mountains where Annie grew up.
Her mother's home was partially destroyed, and her beloved grandmother Gladys was killed when a tree toppled over, pinning her underneath. The entire close-knit community was affected.
Annie and Pip were there when the tragic events of that day panned out, but they managed to escape unscathed. However, a year on, and they are still both traumatised by the things they witnessed on that fateful day.
When Annie receives a call from her Uncle Len letting her know that her mother isn't coping well, Annie makes the decision to return back to the mountains, quitting her job at a vet clinic in the city, and taking Pip with her. She is hoping that the move back to the mountains will allow them both to begin to heal.
As the story continues, we are given a real insight into what the community experienced on the day of the bushfire; the lives, the homes, and the animals that were lost.
The effects the bushfire has had on all of the residents and wildlife in the area is described exceptionally well.
The trauma of the bushfire presents itself in many forms. In Annie's case, she experiences flashbacks, sleepwalking and nightmares.
Young Pip regresses and insists on being called "Phillip". She wets the bed and lashes out at those trying to help her. And Annie's artist mother, Susan, isn't able to paint anymore, and instead spends her days baking dozens upon dozens of cupcakes. It is as though the bushfire has robbed these individuals of a piece of themselves in their hearts, their minds, and their being.
Eliza has done a remarkable job of portraying grief in many different forms. It is clearly evident that she has a background in grief and trauma counselling. She captures the way that it can become all-consuming and affect the way that we treat others and ourselves.
But this is also a book about having the courage to face the things that we don't think are possible.
If you are after a happy story, then this isn't it, although there are some funny parts woven in.
But please don't let that deter you, as Ache is a riveting story of hope, and of learning to pick up the pieces again, and it definitely deserves all of the praise that it has been getting.

'Ache' by Eliza Henry-Jones is downright stunning, A complex human tragedy unfolding with such tenderness and powerful prose from the wise-beyond-her-years Jones, this is a book that'll cut to the heart of every Australian reader - a story resolving around the damage and grief of a bushfire, and a family learning to rise above their loss. I loved it; so aching and atmospheric,

Eliza Henry Jones has captured the terror, loss and aftermath that a small rural town suffers when a bushfire sweeps through.
Annie and her six year old daughter survived the fire. Her grandmother, who insisted they leave, stayed and perished. Annie is drawn back to the devastated town to help her mother and begins to work through her own trauma and the effect it has had on her daughter.
"Ache" is a wonderful story of survival, resilience and the power of a close knit community.

Ache is a beautifully written, well paced tale of belonging and learning to put yourself back together after trauma just about destroys you.

Eliza Henry-Jones chosen a difficult subject to write about - the aftermath of a devastating bushfire. Bushfires are a common occurrence in Australia and all rural communities fear the bad ones that destroy homes, lives and livelihoods. It take communities years to recover from the grief, loss and heartbreak and yet after the initial national appeals for immediate help, they are often forgotten about as they struggle to rebuild their lives.
In Ache, the mountainous rural community is traumatised and has a long way to go in rebuilding and healing. Annie, a vet now living in the city lost her grandmother when a tree fell on the house. A photo of Annie and her young daughter escaping the fires on her horse broadcast around the world made her famous but also reviled by the local community since she was living in the city and not a local. After the fire, Annie went back to help her Uncle Len, also a vet, take care of the dying and injured animals. But now she is suffering from PTSD, unable to settle back to city life and work. Her daughter Pip is also distressed and acting up so Annie makes the decision to take leave from work and go back to the mountains to stay with her mother, leaving husband Tom in the city. It is only there amongst the traumatised community and the peace and tranquility of the mountain that Annie and Pip can begin to heal and recover.
Henry-Jones writes beautifully about the bush, the sounds and the smells of the desiccated forrest after the fire and the early signs of regrowth are so finely drawn that you feel transported into the landscape and know she is writing from first hand observation. However, I struggled to care much about the people, particularly Annie's mother, Susan. She was a teenager when Annie was born and for some reason this prevented her from ever growing up and taking responsibility. Annie's grandmother took over the mothering Annie and was the person who held the family together. Now she is gone they are all struggling to cope without her and Susan is still behaving badly. Annie herself still has strong feelings for her high school sweetheart, Alex and seems ambivalent about poor Tom left behind in the city. Annie's Uncle Len seems the most balanced of the family, a lovely, caring man, caring for the bush and in particular the lyrebird population that lives on the mountain. He knows that all will be well once they return to the forest. This is a thoughtful, insightful book about a difficult subject which does well in depicting the emotional upheaval and heartbreak experienced by the survivors of bush fires.

I struggled to get into this book. Three times before I started to care about the characters. This is the story of a community healing after a devastating bushfire. A thoroughly satisfying read eventually and a heartwarming ending.

3.5★
“Up here’s pretty fucked-up now. It used to be pretty grey, you know? I think most places are grey. But the fires, they make everything shatter into black and white. It’s all so extreme. Everything. Moments where people are so beautiful and so strong and so giving, and then all the other stuff. It’s bloody exhausting.”

So says Rose, Annie's sister, who’s been living on the mountain following severe bushfires the previous year. Annie became famous after a picture of her on horseback, racing out of the fires with her small daughter, hit the front pages of all the major dailies and magazines. She loathes the photo and all it stands for, but we don't know why (well, not for a long time).

She did go back and help but is accused of not really “being there” at the time. She’s a vet and a very capable person, but apparently she didn’t have the personal touch some of the others did. She lives in the city now, maybe Melbourne, though we’re never told, but this sounds like country Victoria and the author lives in Melbourne. Annie and Tom have a 6-year-old daughter, Pip, who wants to be called Phillip now (a male name to indicate she’s brave, she explains later).

Annie’s pretty much a mess; Pip’s a bit of a mess; Annie’s mother, Susan, (who lives in Gran’s house on the mountain) was a teen-aged mother and never really grew up, so she’s a bit of a mess; and Gran died in the wind that fed the fire. Gran, by all accounts, was the rock they all relied on.

Annie’s been living in the city but feels compelled to return to look in on her mother, who’s living in the house the tree fell on that killed Gran. She feels she needs to be there, but Tom finds it too wild for him – he’s a city boy.

“Tom didn’t understand that Annie had to be on the mountain. That the broken generator was her generator. That the broken house was her house. That there was a bit of her that existed beyond him, beyond them. That there was a part of her separate from Pip.”

There are undercurrents and innuendo about the fire, her high school beau, Alex, the inhabitants of the small village – those who stayed, those who left – but I have to say, I didn’t find anyone very interesting, including (or maybe especially) Annie and her family.

I didn’t read the author’s much-lauded debut novel In the Quiet, so I didn’t know what to expect, but probably not this. She’s a fine writer, which may sound odd, considering my whinge above, but I’m looking forward now to reading her first book. This was a nice bit from this one.

“The people who had lost the most were often the ones who told the worst jokes, who worked themselves up into a flurry to get things sorted. The roads cleared, the food distributed, the houses checked. In between the jokes and the manic activity, they’d sit with horrified expressions on their faces. Their grief became like bottles of liquor clutched in underage hands. They hid it in public and opened it up in private, where things were dark and quiet. And after, they slept badly. They rose feeling ill. And the cycle of it repeated itself.”

Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted (so quotes may have changed).

Eliza Henry-Jones is a relatively new, young author but seriously I  would not have guessed it.  In her novel Ache she masterfully leads her audience through the aftermath and trauma that follows bushfire.     In her fictitious Australian town of Quilly it is almost 12 months since the fires swept through claiming lives, destroying homes and families.   The community is  suffering a collective form of PTSD and grieving their losses. 

<i> " Their grief became like bottles of liquor clutched in underage hands. They hid it in public and opened it up in private, where things were dark and quiet. And after , they slept badly. They rose feeling ill. And the cycle of it repeated itself."</i>

The author did a wonderful job of capturing the essence of country Australia with it's beautiful but harsh environment, vividly describing the smells, the sounds, bringing to life the people.   Annie Thompson is the central character.   Although she now lives in the city, Quilly has always been home where she and her young daughter Pip experienced the fires first hand.    Neither of them has truly recovered from the ordeal, the family is quietly disintegrating, and Annie feels the need to return to the mountain.    They stay in what had been the family home.   It was virtually demolished and her mother is living in squallor.     In a community of traumatised people tempers flare unexpectedly, behaviour is at times erratic and emotions are unpredictable.     The Thompson family is no exception. They are shown warts and all as they work through jealousies and assorted insecurities.   It is sad at times and feels so real, yet there is hope.   Ultimately it is a story of healing.
 
So many Australian communities and families have fallen victim to bushfires over the years.  The media spotlight shines upon these communities for a while and as a nation we feel their pain then move on with our lives, or onto the next great tragedy.     This book made me stop and reflect upon the long term impact of bushfire and the ache that the victims of these natural disasters carry with them for the rest of their lives.     So very well done Eliza Henry-Jones. 

Thanks to the author, to Harper Collins Publishers Australia and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"Bushfires are a part of the Australian landscape. This place we call home has been- and will continue to be - shaped by fire. But we still do not understand the very specific type of trauma that can accompany a bushfire." Eliza Henry-Jones , The Guardian May 21, 2017

Eliza Henry-Jones in her new novel gives us more than a glimpse of the trauma, the loss, the heartbreak, the grief over the loss of loved ones, over the loss of their home, over the loss of a place that is no longer as it was, over relationships that have changed because of the fires . The story focuses on Annie and her family and the difficulties in dealing with these losses. It is also about life before the fires and the things from the past that haunt them. It's about the place too - the mountain, the forest, the animals, especially the lyrebird juxtaposed with the city where Annie has been living with her husband and six year old daughter Pip, who wants to be called Phillip for a while as she too suffers the trauma.

The narrative is third person, from Annie's perspective, moving back and forth from present to past. Henry-Jones has a way of making this feel as intimate and introspective as a first person narrative. Annie's relationship with her mother and grandmother in the past as well as a past boyfriend are depicted in the past and in the present, her relationship with her own daughter and her husband. These are fragile people, broken by what has happened yet struggling to heal themselves as well as those they love.

I was so taken with [book:In the Quiet|25669989] so I was anxious to read this one. I loved this one too but just not quite as much. It didn't hold for me the depth of emotion that [book:In the Quiet|25669989] did, so in comparison it's 4 rather than 5 stars. Still, highly recommended. Looking forward to her next work.


I received an advanced copy of this book from HarperCollins/Australia through NetGalley.

Having read the author's debut novel 'In the Quiet', I certainly wasn't disappointed with this one.

Annie has always loved the mountain but she has made her home in the city as a vet, with her husband Tom and six year old daughter Pip. It's been a year since a devastating fire ripped the soul out of the mountain where she was brought up and it's people, she was up there at the time and her escape from the fire on her horse 'Luna' with Pip, was captured for all time by a photographer and plastered across newspapers. The irony of the picture is that her childhood house was spared from the fire but her Grandmother Gladys who stayed behind, was killed by a tree that fell on the house in the wind. A year on sees Annie still unsettled, Pip now wanting to be called Phillip and having anxiety issues. Tom is caught up with work and is blind sided when Annie announces she wants and needs to go back to the mountain for a while with Pip.

I love a book that makes me feel....not that happy, light satisfied feeling but that deep chested 'Ache' (such an apt title), where you feel so much for the characters. And this book made me do just that. The story is as much about life post fire and it's effects on people and the things they do just to get through the days but it's also about the relationship between mothers and daughters. A beautiful story full of acceptance and healing, I loved it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy to read and review.

Book blurb...
The much anticipated new novel - about how a family, and a rural community, recover from a terrible bushfire - from a stunning young Australian writer, Eliza Henry Jones.
A year ago, a devastating bushfire ripped Annie's world apart - killing her grandmother, traumatising her young daughter and leaving her mother's home in the mountains half destroyed. Annie fled back to the city, but the mountain continues to haunt her. Now, drawn by a call for help from her uncle, she's going back to the place she loves most in the world, to try to heal herself, her marriage, her daughter and her mother. A heart-wrenching, tender and lovely novel about loss, grief and regeneration, Ache is not only a story of how we can be broken, but how we can put ourselves back together.

My thoughts…
The author has obviously given a great deal of consideration to the four generations of women in the story and the psychological affects of the trauma of bushfire on the surviving members (and how such an incident can change the course of people's lives). Unfortunately I did not care as much for these characters as I would have liked. I love to read stories that make me feel what the characters feel, but reading Ache did not deliver this for me. Perhaps the narration is what kept me at arms length.

The issues addressed in this story are very real and I can clearly imagine some of the trauma that exists in families in the aftermath of such disasters.

Months after the fires that almost claimed their lives, Annie and her small daughter Pip are still plagued by nightmares and flashbacks. Even though the papers hailed Annie a hero, their front pages all showing the dramatic photo a woman galloping her horse through a blazing inferno, clutching her child in her arms, Annie knows that it wasn’t that simple. It was her fault they were in the path of danger that day. Annie, who had grown up in those hills should have known better.

Escaping back to her city life and into the arms of her bewildered husband, who cannot possibly understand the trauma Annie and Pip have been through, may have put some geographical distance between her and the scene of the horror, but it hasn’t been able to erase her memories. Annie knows that she has to go back to the hills she both loves and fears. The place where she grew up, went to school, first kissed a boy. The place where she nearly died. So despite her husband’s advice, she packs up the car, bundles up Pip and sets off for the hills to confront her worst nightmares.

Ache is a beautifully written book by an author who clearly understands the aftermath of trauma and loss, and who sensitively explores the issue through the eyes of her main protagonists: Annie, the young mother, who has left her home in the hills to pursue her career as veterinarian, but whose heart still belongs to the country. Pip, her six-year old daughter, who hides her trauma and fears by acting out. Susan, Annie’s mother, an eccentric artist who has retreated into her lonely cabin to bake cupcakes, unable to paint or move past the event which cost her mother’s life. And the bewildered Tom, Annie’s husband, who looks on helplessly as his wife and daughter battle their inner demons, unable to get close to them. Although the story is narrated by Annie, we get to know each character intimately – their pain, their fears, their inner turmoil.

As Annie returns to her hometown, she must not only confront her own demons but also those of the town’s inhabitants, people she has known all her life. It is this portrayal of a small community rocked and split apart by tragedy where Henry-Jones’ real talent shone through for me, perfectly capturing the dynamics of people touched by trauma and death. Having lived through a real-live natural disaster myself in the past, some of the things she describes hit very close to home. There were those people who pulled together, and those who fled. People who exploited the tragedy for their own gain, and those who just quietly got on with things, helped out where needed, never craving the spotlight. The initial euphoria of having survived, quickly replaced by the reality of the devastation surrounding them. And the need to find a scapegoat for the pain, the suffering – lashing out at each other in blind fury, all previous allegiances forgotten in the aftermath of the tragedy. Each one of Henry-Jones’ characters is well drawn and true-to-life, their emotions raw, honest and laid bare for everyone to see.

As Annie returns to her old home, we get to know her through flashbacks to her childhood, growing up with a teenage mother and a grandmother who was very much the head of the household, Annie’s uncle the only male figure in her life. There is a nostalgia in Annie’s voice that goes deeper than just dealing with the trauma – it speaks of displacement, of loss of place, of innocence, of home. Still drawn to the hills that featured so strongly in her life, Annie’s city life is a mere front, one that she can no longer maintain.

“Each time she comes back the knows fewer people, fewer cars, fewer trees. Each time she comes back it feels less like home and makes her feel stragely helpless. She wants to go home, but she no longer knows how to find it.”

I also loved Pip, the small girl whose inability to express her trauma into words makes her act out, lash out in anger and fear. It is only with her equally traumatised grandmother that Pip learns to confront her fears, step by little step, to make real healing possible.

Ache is a beautiful tale of trauma, loss and redemption. Like a phoenix rising out of the ashes, our characters need to be stripped completely raw to be able to move on. A rebirth of a kind, a healing, a moving on. In the small steps Henry-Jones’ characters take towards rebuilding their lives, there is a message of hope, of inner peace, of growth. Beautifully written, this is a nostalgic and somewhat dreamy read which deeply touched my heart. Very highly recommended.

Ache is an understated and moving novel, dealing with grief, trauma and healing following a devastating bushfires in a small rural community.

The book is set one year after the tragedy, when the town is still trying to come to terms with its loss. Reading this is not a raw, cathartic emotion-letting, but rather an insight into the dull ache of attempting to carry on. The characters are mostly going about the necessaries of daily life with a minimum of fuss, all the while attempting to heal and knowing that nothing will ever really be the same.

The simple prose and languid pace of this book are very effective at drawing the reader into the pace and matter-of-fact attitude of country life. I've decided that I quite enjoy 'rural Australian literary fiction', provided it is written in the appropriate, no-bullshit style. There's something comforting yet still rough around the edges about it, like visiting your rellies who live in the bush. It helps that I get a bit nostalgic over something as minor as a mention of Stingose.

The representations here of trauma, survivor guilt and grief are rendered with compassion and never sink into melodrama. Some readers might find the writing style a little aloof, the characters too stoic and unyielding, but it felt more real to me for that.

If 'rural noir' is a new trending sub-genre, maybe 'rural melancholy' can become a thing too.

Annie had had her world torn apart by the bushfire in the mountains which had killed her gran, Gladys and partially destroyed her mother’s house – but it was the trauma which still rippled through her six year old daughter Pip that kept the nightmares and sleepless nights around. Living in the city with husband Tom, Annie and Pip struggled on. But Annie missed the mountains that had been her life, plus her mother wasn’t coping well. She needed to return…

Tom was unable to leave work – and he disliked the mountains anyway – so Annie and Pip returned to visit Susan before Christmas. Annie was shocked at what she found – her uncle had been right in his assessment of her mother; and the state of the house that had had nothing done to repair it was concerning. But there was more to it all; Annie knew there was.

With Annie’s marriage faltering; Pip wild, disobedient and reverting to bed-wetting as well as Susan to care for, Annie felt like she could scream some days. What would happen to the little family that had had their lives torn from under them?

Ache by Aussie author Eliza Henry-Jones is the second book for this author after the hugely successful In the Quiet, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Keen to grab this one when I learned of its publication, I’m afraid I feel really disappointed. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters and though I know Pip was traumatised, she was a brat who needed much more discipline than she was getting. I was also shocked by the continual use of unnecessary coarse and offensive language, especially in the hearing of a six year old child.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my digital copy to read and review.