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The Buried Life
You burn your bridges
going into a foreign forest
Dorothy Porter
Three people form an unlikely but spirited connection.
Adrian is a renowned scholar, an expert on death in the modern age whose life has stalled.
Kezi, a young and passionate artist, has been rejected by her family. She hurtles through her days with defiance and regret.
Laura is a successful town planner submerged in a seemingly perfect marriage.
In The Buried Life Andrea Goldsmith brilliantly dissects the conflicts and complexities of contemporary life in a story of love and friendship, faith and fundamentalism, subtly underscored by the power of poetry and music.
You can stifle the past but it will breathe again.
'A novel about death and life, Mahler, poetry and cheese. Goldsmith writes so well about friendship, her characters come to feel like your own friends.' – Andrew Ford
'A rumination on death and the complexity of love from one of our nation’s most brilliant minds.' – Marieke Hardy
going into a foreign forest
Dorothy Porter
Three people form an unlikely but spirited connection.
Adrian is a renowned scholar, an expert on death in the modern age whose life has stalled.
Kezi, a young and passionate artist, has been rejected by her family. She hurtles through her days with defiance and regret.
Laura is a successful town planner submerged in a seemingly perfect marriage.
In The Buried Life Andrea Goldsmith brilliantly dissects the conflicts and complexities of contemporary life in a story of love and friendship, faith and fundamentalism, subtly underscored by the power of poetry and music.
You can stifle the past but it will breathe again.
'A novel about death and life, Mahler, poetry and cheese. Goldsmith writes so well about friendship, her characters come to feel like your own friends.' – Andrew Ford
'A rumination on death and the complexity of love from one of our nation’s most brilliant minds.' – Marieke Hardy
313 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2025
34 people are currently reading
473 people want to read
About the author
Andrea Goldsmith
22 books40 followersAndrea Goldsmith is an Australian novelist. She started learning the piano as a young child, and music remains an abiding passion. She initially trained as a speech pathologist and worked for several years with children suffering from severe communication impairment until becoming a full-time writer in the late 1980s. During the 1990s she taught creative writing at Deakin University, and she continues to conduct workshops and mentor new novelists.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
March 21, 2025
I’ve really been dithering over this review because I wanted to do this perfect novel justice. I love Andrea Goldsmith’s work, having previously read Invented Lives, a novel I was so impressed with. The Buried Life was, to me, utter perfection, the exact type of literary fiction I crave. She brings people to life, in all their imperfect glory, and Melbourne sings on the page by way of her pen.
‘And then there was love. It’s hard being loved, you have to live up to it, be worthy of it.’
This is a story of friendship, love, death, and the things we bury deep within. The three main characters and what they come to mean to each other was profound. We have Adrian, a man in his forties, living alone now after the end of a long-term relationship, a professor on the subject of death. His best friend is Kezi, a woman in her twenties who lives close by, estranged from her religious family, lonely and adrift despite having a committed girlfriend and a creative career that is taking off. When Adrian meets Laura by chance in a cheese shop, a woman in her sixties, married for over thirty years, with a successful career in town planning, their trio is formed, despite the vast age gaps between each of them and their varied backgrounds.
Laura was a deeply complex character, and I adored her (she was probably my favourite by a nudge), but her marriage with Tony pained me. What an insufferable prig he was. An absolute liar, a con man, inadequate and irrelevant. He was somewhat familiar, perhaps all women have come across a Tony here and there over the years. What Goldsmith does though, with Laura and the way she justified Tony’s behaviour towards her, the things he would say, the gratitude she seemed intent on laying at his feet, for choosing her, for improving her, even though she knew, deep inside, that he was the ruin of her. It took the accidental discovery of a lie to unravel a marriage of over thirty years. I can’t quite articulate the way Goldsmith depicted this marriage and its toxicity, but it was so finely written.
‘It pains me to say it, but you’re like one of Skinner’s rats,’ Hannah had said years ago. ‘Tony dismantles you piece by piece. And when you’re hardly recognisable, he comes to your rescue with a little reward, a little pat. Your husband knows exactly when to stop.’
And then we have Adrian, such a contrast to Tony, not a perfect man, but a different one. I love the way Goldsmith revisits things from a different perspective, and in doing so, conveys so much about a character and their dynamic with another. Take these two perspectives on Laura’s scarf:
‘Laura pulled her hat lower and twisted a hot-pink scarf around her neck. The colour was perfect against her skin.’ (Adrian’s perspective)
‘She pulled on a hat and twisted a scarf about her neck, the hot-pink one that Tony said made her look sallow; he was probably right, but it was a gift from her sister, and she liked it.’
Just a scarf, but these two sentences contain a tiny universe of information for the reader, and you instantly know what type of man Adrian is, and what type of man Tony is. This is what she does. This is how she writes. And then there is the end. Part IV, Trekking in Antartica. I have no words to describe how I felt when this title fell into place within the narrative.
Cheese, wine, and rambling conversations about art, death, music, and literature. A brilliant, stunning novel that will undoubtedly be my book of the year for 2025.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
‘And then there was love. It’s hard being loved, you have to live up to it, be worthy of it.’
This is a story of friendship, love, death, and the things we bury deep within. The three main characters and what they come to mean to each other was profound. We have Adrian, a man in his forties, living alone now after the end of a long-term relationship, a professor on the subject of death. His best friend is Kezi, a woman in her twenties who lives close by, estranged from her religious family, lonely and adrift despite having a committed girlfriend and a creative career that is taking off. When Adrian meets Laura by chance in a cheese shop, a woman in her sixties, married for over thirty years, with a successful career in town planning, their trio is formed, despite the vast age gaps between each of them and their varied backgrounds.
Laura was a deeply complex character, and I adored her (she was probably my favourite by a nudge), but her marriage with Tony pained me. What an insufferable prig he was. An absolute liar, a con man, inadequate and irrelevant. He was somewhat familiar, perhaps all women have come across a Tony here and there over the years. What Goldsmith does though, with Laura and the way she justified Tony’s behaviour towards her, the things he would say, the gratitude she seemed intent on laying at his feet, for choosing her, for improving her, even though she knew, deep inside, that he was the ruin of her. It took the accidental discovery of a lie to unravel a marriage of over thirty years. I can’t quite articulate the way Goldsmith depicted this marriage and its toxicity, but it was so finely written.
‘It pains me to say it, but you’re like one of Skinner’s rats,’ Hannah had said years ago. ‘Tony dismantles you piece by piece. And when you’re hardly recognisable, he comes to your rescue with a little reward, a little pat. Your husband knows exactly when to stop.’
And then we have Adrian, such a contrast to Tony, not a perfect man, but a different one. I love the way Goldsmith revisits things from a different perspective, and in doing so, conveys so much about a character and their dynamic with another. Take these two perspectives on Laura’s scarf:
‘Laura pulled her hat lower and twisted a hot-pink scarf around her neck. The colour was perfect against her skin.’ (Adrian’s perspective)
‘She pulled on a hat and twisted a scarf about her neck, the hot-pink one that Tony said made her look sallow; he was probably right, but it was a gift from her sister, and she liked it.’
Just a scarf, but these two sentences contain a tiny universe of information for the reader, and you instantly know what type of man Adrian is, and what type of man Tony is. This is what she does. This is how she writes. And then there is the end. Part IV, Trekking in Antartica. I have no words to describe how I felt when this title fell into place within the narrative.
Cheese, wine, and rambling conversations about art, death, music, and literature. A brilliant, stunning novel that will undoubtedly be my book of the year for 2025.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
May 17, 2025
I’m finding The Buried Life hard to review. I’m trying to do this outstanding novel justice. But where to start? I haven’t stopped thinking about the characters since I finished the book a few days ago.
Kezi, Adrian and Laura all at a crossroads in their life form a friendship that helps each of them uncover and understand buried emotions and move forward in life.
I loved how Goldsmith gives each character their own distinct voice.
Goldsmith’s prose are lyrical and mesmerizing, rich in poetry and music. The Buried Life is a story of life and death, how life’s circumstances affect us deeply and true friendships help to awaken and heal buried hurts.
Viscerally described scenes, polished prose and the power of music to both heighten and soothe emotions play an important role in this powerful novel of awakening.
Full review: https://theburgeoningbookshelf.blogsp...
Kezi, Adrian and Laura all at a crossroads in their life form a friendship that helps each of them uncover and understand buried emotions and move forward in life.
I loved how Goldsmith gives each character their own distinct voice.
Goldsmith’s prose are lyrical and mesmerizing, rich in poetry and music. The Buried Life is a story of life and death, how life’s circumstances affect us deeply and true friendships help to awaken and heal buried hurts.
Viscerally described scenes, polished prose and the power of music to both heighten and soothe emotions play an important role in this powerful novel of awakening.
Full review: https://theburgeoningbookshelf.blogsp...
February 15, 2025
A new novel by Andrea Goldsmith is always An Event for me, and The Buried Life lived up to my expectations in every way. It is such a beautiful book, I took ages to read it, savouring the prose, chasing up the allusions to music and books and poetry, and thinking about it, every day.
Three main characters stole my heart. The academic Adrian has his fateful meeting with a town planner called Laura when he takes a break from eating lunch on the Melbourne University campus. He visits a cheese shop (probably this one, the Spring Street Cheese Cellar) where the customer preceding him is vacillating over a familiar Colston Bassett or a new experience with a Rogue River Blue. *chuckle* They bond over cheeses, and have an enjoyable impromptu lunch together.
And long-married Laura, we soon start to see, finds herself enjoying the company of this younger man. But no, The Buried Life is not some dopey romance. Laura, nearly sixty, is welded into her long marriage and makes that clear to Adrian from the outset.
But what is gradually revealed to the reader's dismay is that Laura is a contemporary Dorothea in thrall to a mentor not worthy of her, and she embodies a reminder of the genius of George Eliot's Middlemarch, a novel about coercive control that still has relevance today.
The Buried Life begins with Adrian, who is a complex character. He was orphaned very young — too young to remember or grieve the loss of his parents, an aspect of his life that he has buried so deeply that he thinks it has not affected him. Indeed, he is a professor whose field of academic study is Death. Paradoxically, this enables him to keep at a distance the deaths of his parents, and later, of the grandparents who brought him up.
But Adrian is not immune from grief even if he doesn't recognise it. He is on the rebound from a relationship with Irene.
He doesn't understand why their relationship of ten years failed, and he doesn't know how to let go.
Music plays an important role in this exquisite novel, and this is the music that enchants Adrian when he's in a dingy café on the way back from a conference...
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/02/15/t...
Three main characters stole my heart. The academic Adrian has his fateful meeting with a town planner called Laura when he takes a break from eating lunch on the Melbourne University campus. He visits a cheese shop (probably this one, the Spring Street Cheese Cellar) where the customer preceding him is vacillating over a familiar Colston Bassett or a new experience with a Rogue River Blue. *chuckle* They bond over cheeses, and have an enjoyable impromptu lunch together.
And long-married Laura, we soon start to see, finds herself enjoying the company of this younger man. But no, The Buried Life is not some dopey romance. Laura, nearly sixty, is welded into her long marriage and makes that clear to Adrian from the outset.
But what is gradually revealed to the reader's dismay is that Laura is a contemporary Dorothea in thrall to a mentor not worthy of her, and she embodies a reminder of the genius of George Eliot's Middlemarch, a novel about coercive control that still has relevance today.
The Buried Life begins with Adrian, who is a complex character. He was orphaned very young — too young to remember or grieve the loss of his parents, an aspect of his life that he has buried so deeply that he thinks it has not affected him. Indeed, he is a professor whose field of academic study is Death. Paradoxically, this enables him to keep at a distance the deaths of his parents, and later, of the grandparents who brought him up.
That an experience common to all humankind, indeed, to all living things, should retain so much mystery and engender so much fear still fascinated him. He had written on several aspects of death, but his primary interest, and the area on which his reputation rested, was the social and cultural meanings of death in the modern era: the ways in which attitudes and practices about death exposed the fundamental principles, values and beliefs of a people and their culture. (p.8)
But Adrian is not immune from grief even if he doesn't recognise it. He is on the rebound from a relationship with Irene.
She'd left just over a year ago, and it was as if he'd bookmarked life, planning to get back to it once he'd recovered from the breakup. But he had not recovered, and he hadn't moved on; his impoverished social life, his packaged meals, the decrepit house, and his own desolate heart all condemned him.(p.4)
He doesn't understand why their relationship of ten years failed, and he doesn't know how to let go.
Music plays an important role in this exquisite novel, and this is the music that enchants Adrian when he's in a dingy café on the way back from a conference...
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/02/15/t...
August 14, 2025
There are lots of reasons to immerse yourself in this story (cheese, music, Melbourne, the fine detail of friendships) but you could also simply turn all your reading attention to the character of Tony - one of the vilest and most perfectly-rendered narcissists I've read in ages. I was cheering out loud for his comeuppance.
November 23, 2025
Simply brilliant. Wonderfully written story of 3 characters, each with something from their past that they have hidden (buried) from others & themselves. All develop into amazing 3 dimensional people - written with love but a hint of sadness (regret?). Amazing book.
January 6, 2026
Set in contemporary Melbourne, The Buried Life is about three characters who form a connection. Adrian Moore is a university scholar who studies death, Laura is a highly successful town planner and Kezi is a young artist still coming to terms with being shunned by her family for rejecting their religion.
Written by Australian author Andrea Goldsmith, each of the three characters were well fleshed out and really came alive on the page.
We're introduced to 43 year old Adrian on the first page as he reflects on the fact that his university colleagues call him Doctor Death.
"Adrian believed no malice was intended; it was a term of familiarity, like any nickname. And it was accurate: death was his subject. He studied it, he wrote books about it, he lectured on it. As a result of his endeavours, death had yielded up a good many of its stings and mysteries." Page 3
Wow, what an opening paragraph, I was instantly hooked! Adrian's work was fascinating and my sole reason for reading this book. Thankfully this formed a great deal of the content and I enjoyed references to classic works and graveyard poetry in particular. However Adrian is mourning (sorry, couldn't help it) the demise of a 10 year relationship a year ago and starts to reflect on his career in an attempt to find a new angle in his field of study.
As a town planner, Laura was an interesting character however the author focuses almost entirely on her relationship with her controlling husband, not her career. Laura slowly - sometimes too slowly for my liking - begins to see her marriage in a new light although I quickly recognised her charming, lying husband Tony as a narcissist.
Adrian and Laura share a mutual love of cheese and Adrian is a close friend - almost a parental figure - to Kezi, a young artist who makes hand-made paper. These three characters are brought together in this literary novel with themes of death, parental estrangement, the depths of friendship and connection dominating the pages.
I really enjoyed the familiar setting on the streets of Melbourne:
"Melbourne, a sprawling metropolis of more than five million inhabitants, boasts a unique peculiarity: people accidentally run into friends and acquaintances, or they meet strangers with whom there is just one or two degrees of separation. Sydney is not like this, nor Saint Petersburg, nor Barcelona, all cities of a similar size to Melbourne. ....Melbourne is still a village; but a reason for ridicule by Sydneysiders is a source of delight for Melburnians." Page 119
I particularly enjoyed the mention of the Readings Bookshop on Lygon Street where I plan on taking my friend from Queensland later this month and who actually recommended this book!
If you enjoy literary fiction about romantic relationships, platonic friendships and familial ties this is for you. If you enjoy music by Mahler, cheese or writings about death this is for you.
I'll leave you with an example of the writing style and Adrian's thoughts on cheese, admitting he shows no restraint:
"Soft cheese, hard cheese, blue mould, white mould, washed rind, cloth-bound, salty cheese, smoky cheese, cow's milk, ewe's milk, cooked cheese, raw cheese: Adrian was captive to them all. Only ricotta and cheese made from goat's milk failed to delight; the former lacked flavour and was the texture of vomit, the latter tasted of charcoal and perspiration." Page 75
The Buried Life by Andrea Goldsmith isn't my usual reading fare but earned an additional star for inspiring me to listen to music by Mahler and check out the hand-made paper scene here in Melbourne.
* Copy courtesy of Transit Lounge *
Written by Australian author Andrea Goldsmith, each of the three characters were well fleshed out and really came alive on the page.
We're introduced to 43 year old Adrian on the first page as he reflects on the fact that his university colleagues call him Doctor Death.
"Adrian believed no malice was intended; it was a term of familiarity, like any nickname. And it was accurate: death was his subject. He studied it, he wrote books about it, he lectured on it. As a result of his endeavours, death had yielded up a good many of its stings and mysteries." Page 3
Wow, what an opening paragraph, I was instantly hooked! Adrian's work was fascinating and my sole reason for reading this book. Thankfully this formed a great deal of the content and I enjoyed references to classic works and graveyard poetry in particular. However Adrian is mourning (sorry, couldn't help it) the demise of a 10 year relationship a year ago and starts to reflect on his career in an attempt to find a new angle in his field of study.
As a town planner, Laura was an interesting character however the author focuses almost entirely on her relationship with her controlling husband, not her career. Laura slowly - sometimes too slowly for my liking - begins to see her marriage in a new light although I quickly recognised her charming, lying husband Tony as a narcissist.
Adrian and Laura share a mutual love of cheese and Adrian is a close friend - almost a parental figure - to Kezi, a young artist who makes hand-made paper. These three characters are brought together in this literary novel with themes of death, parental estrangement, the depths of friendship and connection dominating the pages.
I really enjoyed the familiar setting on the streets of Melbourne:
"Melbourne, a sprawling metropolis of more than five million inhabitants, boasts a unique peculiarity: people accidentally run into friends and acquaintances, or they meet strangers with whom there is just one or two degrees of separation. Sydney is not like this, nor Saint Petersburg, nor Barcelona, all cities of a similar size to Melbourne. ....Melbourne is still a village; but a reason for ridicule by Sydneysiders is a source of delight for Melburnians." Page 119
I particularly enjoyed the mention of the Readings Bookshop on Lygon Street where I plan on taking my friend from Queensland later this month and who actually recommended this book!
If you enjoy literary fiction about romantic relationships, platonic friendships and familial ties this is for you. If you enjoy music by Mahler, cheese or writings about death this is for you.
I'll leave you with an example of the writing style and Adrian's thoughts on cheese, admitting he shows no restraint:
"Soft cheese, hard cheese, blue mould, white mould, washed rind, cloth-bound, salty cheese, smoky cheese, cow's milk, ewe's milk, cooked cheese, raw cheese: Adrian was captive to them all. Only ricotta and cheese made from goat's milk failed to delight; the former lacked flavour and was the texture of vomit, the latter tasted of charcoal and perspiration." Page 75
The Buried Life by Andrea Goldsmith isn't my usual reading fare but earned an additional star for inspiring me to listen to music by Mahler and check out the hand-made paper scene here in Melbourne.
* Copy courtesy of Transit Lounge *
May 4, 2025
I’m very pleased to have read this very moving book, both deeply reflective and compelling to read. Highly praised, worth every word. Four characters figure strongly, all so well imagined. It’s a story of close personal relationships, affected by life and time of course. The nature of closeness might make some readers uncomfortable. I do wish beauty wasn’t a significant feature for one of them. I loved the Melbourne setting, and the use of music and background of mortality make the book so interesting.
September 15, 2025
2.5 stars. The death studies scholar was the draw card for me, but the narration meanders its way to spend the bulk of the story on Laura’s dysfunctional marriage (which felt implausible) when I wanted to hang out with Adrian, but then even he became uninteresting. It felt like being dragged along on a walk I wasn’t interested in going on. Very much a “tell” story and not “show” and gave me little to contemplate.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 16, 2025
Big hearted novel about, unlikely friendships, our chosen families, love, loss and the hurt and pleasures that gives meaning to our lives.
Confident in structure, beautiful in delivery.
Confident in structure, beautiful in delivery.
June 24, 2025
THE BURIED LIFE (Transit Lounge 2025) by Andrea Goldsmith is a literary work of poetic beauty, brilliant craft, meaningful themes and characters with whom we become deeply invested.
The novel features three main protagonists who form an unlikely but inseparable connection. Laura is a successful and smart town planner who has an apparently perfect marriage, although as the story progresses, we begin to glimpse cracks which gradually widen until they threaten to engulf her. The examination of her relationship with her husband is immersive, intellectual, provocative, thought-provoking and detailed. Laura’s interior monologue expands as the narrative progresses, and we are privy to a plethora of criticisms, justifications, excuses, bargaining, habits and preconceived notions become fact that typify not only her marriage but her own personal ambitions and motivations.
Adrian is an expert on death, a morbid subject that he has focussed on throughout his entire, successful academic career. He writes and thinks about death, its forms and reasons and traditions and consequences, but has never really thought about his own beleaguered childhood trauma and how that might affect his adult notions.
And Kezi is a young, enigmatic, quirky character, a passionate artist who creates beautiful handmade paper. Her fundamentalist family and community have rejected her and she struggles to forge a way forward while trying to make sense of her past.
These three very different people are thrown together by circumstance, to find that not only are they compatible, but they are drawn together by common desires, needs and dreams, until they exist as an almost perfect circle of three, each necessary for the other. This is nowhere more obvious than towards the end of the novel, when each is forced to make serious choices as they face difficult challenges to their health, their work, their relationships and their families.
This lovely, contemporary story includes music, art and words as expressions of each individual’s need to fulfil their ambitions. As the characters become more known to us, they each reveal desires, secrets, childhood memories and dreams that add to the complexity and nuance of their situations.
Goldsmith effortlessly merges banal, day-to-day activities with higher concerns of the mind and intellectual pursuits, seamlessly combining both to create rich and layered lives for Laura, Adrian and Kezi. Very much set in Melbourne, readers who enjoy a deep dive into the interiority and motivations of characters set in a familiar location will enjoy the intellectual acrobatics and tender personal interactions depicted in THE BURIED LIFE.
The novel features three main protagonists who form an unlikely but inseparable connection. Laura is a successful and smart town planner who has an apparently perfect marriage, although as the story progresses, we begin to glimpse cracks which gradually widen until they threaten to engulf her. The examination of her relationship with her husband is immersive, intellectual, provocative, thought-provoking and detailed. Laura’s interior monologue expands as the narrative progresses, and we are privy to a plethora of criticisms, justifications, excuses, bargaining, habits and preconceived notions become fact that typify not only her marriage but her own personal ambitions and motivations.
Adrian is an expert on death, a morbid subject that he has focussed on throughout his entire, successful academic career. He writes and thinks about death, its forms and reasons and traditions and consequences, but has never really thought about his own beleaguered childhood trauma and how that might affect his adult notions.
And Kezi is a young, enigmatic, quirky character, a passionate artist who creates beautiful handmade paper. Her fundamentalist family and community have rejected her and she struggles to forge a way forward while trying to make sense of her past.
These three very different people are thrown together by circumstance, to find that not only are they compatible, but they are drawn together by common desires, needs and dreams, until they exist as an almost perfect circle of three, each necessary for the other. This is nowhere more obvious than towards the end of the novel, when each is forced to make serious choices as they face difficult challenges to their health, their work, their relationships and their families.
This lovely, contemporary story includes music, art and words as expressions of each individual’s need to fulfil their ambitions. As the characters become more known to us, they each reveal desires, secrets, childhood memories and dreams that add to the complexity and nuance of their situations.
Goldsmith effortlessly merges banal, day-to-day activities with higher concerns of the mind and intellectual pursuits, seamlessly combining both to create rich and layered lives for Laura, Adrian and Kezi. Very much set in Melbourne, readers who enjoy a deep dive into the interiority and motivations of characters set in a familiar location will enjoy the intellectual acrobatics and tender personal interactions depicted in THE BURIED LIFE.
March 16, 2025
Award winning author Andrea Goldsmith has not disappointed her reading audience with her ninth book, ‘The Buried Life’, in which her three main characters, Adrian, Kezi and Laura have caused to evaluate their ‘buried lives’.
When the reader first meets the main protagonists, forty years plus Melbourne University academic Adrian Moore (renowned authority on death in the modern age), is ruminating about the end of his ten-year relationship with Irene, while his 28-year-old lesbian friend, vivacious Kezi is struggling with her fundamentalist upbringing and its community, which cannot accept her differences.
Meanwhile beautiful 58-year-old Laura Benady, accomplished town planner, who is devoted to Tony, a mediocre academic believes that her long marriage is perfect. Despite their age difference, the three develop an unlikely deep friendship, which allows each of them to uncover his/her ‘buried life’.
Music can have a profound effect on people; after hearing Mahler’s music Adrian comes to understand himself differently. On the other hand, for Kezi, who is still troubled by faith and its complexities, it is a change in her circumstances, which allows her to review her relationship with her parents. For Laura it is cheese! The meeting with Adrian in a cheese shop, and a careless lie are the catalysts for her to reflect on what she believes to be a wonderful husband, and perfect marriage; can she live happily without him?
As the narrative unfolds the author gently explores Kezi, Laura and Adrian’s feelings, their relationships and the power of friendship.
In this novel the author exposes her readers to love, faith, coercive control and the power of art and music. No doubt some readers will find themselves chasing up the references to music, books and poetry.
reviewed by Nan van Dissel for Transit Lounge and Bluewolf Reviews.
When the reader first meets the main protagonists, forty years plus Melbourne University academic Adrian Moore (renowned authority on death in the modern age), is ruminating about the end of his ten-year relationship with Irene, while his 28-year-old lesbian friend, vivacious Kezi is struggling with her fundamentalist upbringing and its community, which cannot accept her differences.
Meanwhile beautiful 58-year-old Laura Benady, accomplished town planner, who is devoted to Tony, a mediocre academic believes that her long marriage is perfect. Despite their age difference, the three develop an unlikely deep friendship, which allows each of them to uncover his/her ‘buried life’.
Music can have a profound effect on people; after hearing Mahler’s music Adrian comes to understand himself differently. On the other hand, for Kezi, who is still troubled by faith and its complexities, it is a change in her circumstances, which allows her to review her relationship with her parents. For Laura it is cheese! The meeting with Adrian in a cheese shop, and a careless lie are the catalysts for her to reflect on what she believes to be a wonderful husband, and perfect marriage; can she live happily without him?
As the narrative unfolds the author gently explores Kezi, Laura and Adrian’s feelings, their relationships and the power of friendship.
In this novel the author exposes her readers to love, faith, coercive control and the power of art and music. No doubt some readers will find themselves chasing up the references to music, books and poetry.
reviewed by Nan van Dissel for Transit Lounge and Bluewolf Reviews.
February 14, 2025
Andrea Goldsmith’s novel interweaves themes of friendship, love, food, music and literature with such insight that the reader becomes immersed in her fictional world from the outset. Her deceptively restrained and elegant style dissects the inner lives of her characters and resonates with a strong sense of place and understanding of the diverse worlds the story inhabits – academic, musical, artistic.
The book’s title The Buried Life could apply equally to any of the three main characters, Adrian, Kezi and Laura. Adrian is a respected academic whose field of specialty is death. His partner, Irene, has just dumped him claiming he’s more involved with death than with life. Drifting in his life, he takes comfort in his friendship with Kezi, a young artist. Kezi, however, has problems of her own, stemming from her rejection by her parents, her fledgling relationship with another woman, Paige, and an undiagnosed illness. When Adrian meets Laura, a woman married to Tony, a self-centred man, they recognise in each other a kindred spirit and they become friends. Friendship develops into something more as Laura recognises that Tony, rather than being the stimulating intellectual she’d believed him to be, is a man of straw.
Goldsmith masterfully explores the inner fears, motivations and redemptive qualities of all three characters, and shows how each of them discovers hitherto unsuspected strengths and greater purpose through challenging and confronting circumstances.
The book’s title The Buried Life could apply equally to any of the three main characters, Adrian, Kezi and Laura. Adrian is a respected academic whose field of specialty is death. His partner, Irene, has just dumped him claiming he’s more involved with death than with life. Drifting in his life, he takes comfort in his friendship with Kezi, a young artist. Kezi, however, has problems of her own, stemming from her rejection by her parents, her fledgling relationship with another woman, Paige, and an undiagnosed illness. When Adrian meets Laura, a woman married to Tony, a self-centred man, they recognise in each other a kindred spirit and they become friends. Friendship develops into something more as Laura recognises that Tony, rather than being the stimulating intellectual she’d believed him to be, is a man of straw.
Goldsmith masterfully explores the inner fears, motivations and redemptive qualities of all three characters, and shows how each of them discovers hitherto unsuspected strengths and greater purpose through challenging and confronting circumstances.
March 4, 2025
The current that runs through Matthew Arnold’s poem, “The Buried Life”, is the inspiration and core of Goldsmith’s sensitive narration. Her three main characters each have within them a recurring voice of the person they wish to be, the conflict between that desired self and the person they have become. Adrian, a “death” scholar who suppresses his own memories and fears of death; Laura, who struggles to see her marriage and herself in their true light; and Kezi, whose refusal to live the fundamentalist life of her family – each of them faces a stark realisation that will change the course of their lives and their relationships to each other.
I marvelled at the skilful characterisation by the author, each character’s past and present so meticulously drawn that their friendships and conflicts brought me close to each one. Goldsmith wove music and poetry through her tapestry, adding depth to her narration. Her characters initially “[mourn] the buried life”, but ultimately recognise “what insisted on being at last acknowledged.”
I marvelled at the skilful characterisation by the author, each character’s past and present so meticulously drawn that their friendships and conflicts brought me close to each one. Goldsmith wove music and poetry through her tapestry, adding depth to her narration. Her characters initially “[mourn] the buried life”, but ultimately recognise “what insisted on being at last acknowledged.”
March 15, 2025
Beautifully written. There are passages that left me breathless, Adrian in the cemetery in particular. Her characters leave the page and travel with you throughout your day. She is a wonderful writer. The intense intimacy she creates around her 4 main characters is so real it's like you're in the same room and can see and hear them. Amazing. I'm going with 4 stars because at one point, close to the end, I got annoyed with her repetition of the ugliness of Tony, the monster in Laura's life. We know he's a bastard, she tells us that over and over. And Laura's inability to act on it was frustrating. I know women who are in these relationships find it hard to move on so I may be over critical on this but it took the zing out of the read for me. But the final chapter is deeply moving and as a whole, the book is a thoroughly good read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 8, 2025
Coercive abuse, the hypocrisy of religious fundamentalism, love and friendship, death - these are the themes in this novel. Maybe too many, but the friendship between the three main protagonists was delightfully portrayed and provided Goldsmith with a means of bringing these themes together. It took me a while to warm to Goldsmith's writing but I was hooked by the end. I'm not sure that the novel was satisfactorily resolved though (and I am no fan of unnecessarily tidy endings). I wanted to know more about the next stages in life for Adrian and Laura, both separately and to a lesser extent together.
October 19, 2025
Exactly as Andrew Ford says on the back: a novel about death and life, Melbourne, Mahler, poetry and cheese. Goldsmith writes so well about friendship…
Adrian didn’t convince me in the beginning but grew as his relationship with Irene dissolved. Kezi the young paper maker, escapee from the culty church is the star of the story for me. A beautifully written and conceived ending. Mahler the soundtrack. Das Lied von der Erde. Der Abschied sung by Kathleen Ferrier didn’t have the same transformative power for me as it did for Adrian in the cafe in the small town on his road trip from Adelaide to Melbourne, but added another layer to this beautiful read.
Adrian didn’t convince me in the beginning but grew as his relationship with Irene dissolved. Kezi the young paper maker, escapee from the culty church is the star of the story for me. A beautifully written and conceived ending. Mahler the soundtrack. Das Lied von der Erde. Der Abschied sung by Kathleen Ferrier didn’t have the same transformative power for me as it did for Adrian in the cafe in the small town on his road trip from Adelaide to Melbourne, but added another layer to this beautiful read.
March 21, 2025
Exploration of male psyche
I found this a satisfying book as it examined male delusion in the characters of Tony and Adrian. Adrian, however, was able to recognise his delusion. He eventually realised he knew nothing about Death. I loved Kezi, understood Laura’s inability to leave Tony. The exploration of the influences of one’s early life was illuminating. The evangelical Christian belief system is examined in relation to Kezi and shown to be cruel. A story of love,loss and resilience.
I found this a satisfying book as it examined male delusion in the characters of Tony and Adrian. Adrian, however, was able to recognise his delusion. He eventually realised he knew nothing about Death. I loved Kezi, understood Laura’s inability to leave Tony. The exploration of the influences of one’s early life was illuminating. The evangelical Christian belief system is examined in relation to Kezi and shown to be cruel. A story of love,loss and resilience.
June 25, 2025
Beautifully written with soft and subtle character development. It was so easy to become ‘invested’ in the good people in this book and totally disliked the villain. Death is such an interesting canvas to work on, both the academic side of exploring death as well as the inevitable practical application of death in many permutations. I think this is my first Andrea Goldsmith but it will not be my last. She ranges easily through the locations that Melbourne readers will know so well. An empathetic and sympathetic book that is well worth reading.
June 22, 2025
This is a beautifully written story of the interwoven lives of three people. Their connection reveals itself to be about loss of faith and family, and the death of several things for all - relationships, again faith and actual death. The immersion in a toxic marriage and the wife’s slow realisation that she is being coercively controlled is a masterpiece of understatement and emotion. A soft slow read with in-depth emotional characters, I highly recommend this book and writer.
June 19, 2025
While the story begins slowly, it soon became a novel I couldn’t put down. And when I’d finished I was bereft. This story of three different people who live in Melbourne and are drawn together is very clever, beautiful and unforgettable. Another wonderful novel that interprets love and family outside the normal boundaries and it works so well.
April 14, 2025
A beautifully written, absolutely absorbing story. I was highlighting passages not just for their significance but also for how beautifully phrased they were. Outstanding work, such a pleasure to read.
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April 16, 2025The ending oh my god...
Okay I really liked some sections of this book but there were sections which were really meh in terms of the writing style like I didn't need to be reminded of a character's ethnic background so many times it seems like it is borderline fetishising the character eek...
Okay I really liked some sections of this book but there were sections which were really meh in terms of the writing style like I didn't need to be reminded of a character's ethnic background so many times it seems like it is borderline fetishising the character eek...
June 11, 2025
A real page turner for me.
Many different interlocking ideas and concepts brought me to wonder what would happen next.
Very lifelike characters. I could identify with them.
Book club referral certainly helps spread my reading genres.
Many different interlocking ideas and concepts brought me to wonder what would happen next.
Very lifelike characters. I could identify with them.
Book club referral certainly helps spread my reading genres.
July 19, 2025
I liked the premise of this book, and was new to Andrea Goldsmith, despite her having published quite a few books.
This one is hard to review in a way. It is a slow, almost meditative character study of Adrian, Laura and Kezi.
While I liked the characters, I found the narrative too slow and predictable for me to finish it. I got to page 170 before deciding that I’d seen enough. I was promised that the pace would pick up, but for me it never did. It’s also not like me to predict where a book is going.
The book, perhaps not a surprise given it features academics, involves commentary on academia, which I enjoyed, and frequent references to high culture music and literature. I found this challenging, not being familiar with many of them myself.
Three stars as it had both good parts and not so good parts. I wouldn’t rule out reading more from Andrea Goldsmith, however.
This one is hard to review in a way. It is a slow, almost meditative character study of Adrian, Laura and Kezi.
While I liked the characters, I found the narrative too slow and predictable for me to finish it. I got to page 170 before deciding that I’d seen enough. I was promised that the pace would pick up, but for me it never did. It’s also not like me to predict where a book is going.
The book, perhaps not a surprise given it features academics, involves commentary on academia, which I enjoyed, and frequent references to high culture music and literature. I found this challenging, not being familiar with many of them myself.
Three stars as it had both good parts and not so good parts. I wouldn’t rule out reading more from Andrea Goldsmith, however.
August 24, 2025
This is a book club read. I really enjoyed it and found it easy to read. When it started I thought it was going to be something a little more - especially the main character's job of studying death, which was very interesting. But I did find by the end it was pretty conventional. I liked it though.
October 26, 2025
Deals realistically with the complexities of Laura's relationship with a controlling husband. Doesn't fall prey to a 'happy reconciliation between Kezi and her religious parents. Many enjoyable references to music and poetry. And of course, set in Melbourne's familiar territory
November 7, 2025
I loved this book! The psychological portrait of each of the main characters provides such insight into how human beings can totally delude themselves - until circumstances eventually force them to confront themselves. I have read Goldsmith before and enjoyed it but I think this one surpasses it.
January 12, 2026
I didn't love this book in the first couple of chapters while the characters were being introduced. Once they were, I really enjoyed the way the characters were written and the relationships between them. Would recommend.
January 24, 2026
Such a beautiful and moving exploration of life and the fundamental relationships that make up our life- the ones that bring joy and the ones that bring other more complex emotions. Its not often a book brings me to tears but this one did in a way I loved
April 25, 2025
What a good, wise and gentle read this lovely book is. A true pleasure, and I relished its sense of place, too.
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