Before I tell you what this book is about, I have to say it is one of the most stirring and sensitive books I have read for a long time. It left me asking myself how I would handle situations the main character in this book faces.
Readers first meet Marion Flint at her rundown home on an isolated spot on the west coast of New Zealand.
It's on this stretch of beach she first meets Ika, a young boy who hardly says a word. They become friends and Ika visits Marion's kitchen for soup and bread.
Then one day, as Marion waits for him, she spots something floating in the sea. When she realises it is the small boy she dashes to his rescue.He is covered in bruises and Marion decides she needs to step in and help this small defenceless child.
However, as she gets more and more involved with him, his family and her neighbour, she is forced to face the reasons she chose to live such a lonely and isolated life.
Marion takes readers back to her childhood where something so awful happened she still can't face it. As she hunts her subconscious for memories she recalls her name wasn't Marion but Marianne; she also remembers the pain of leaving her granddad. She sees herself as a little girl curled up in a cot with her brother and sees her mother sitting, staring into space, still in her dressing gown, when she gets home from school. She also remembers a man, shouting and slamming doors.
Author Linda Olsson writes with such compassion that readers can't help but feel for Marion.
Olsson was born in Sweden but settled in New Zealand in the late 1980s. The Kindness of Your Nature is her third novel. An outstanding read.
The Kindness of Your Nature
by Linda Olsson
Penguin, $40