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Hope Farm
'They were inescapable, the tensions of the adult world — the fraught and febrile aura that surrounded Ishtar and those in her orbit, that whined and creaked like a wire pulled too tight.'
It is the winter of 1985. Hope Farm sticks out of the ragged landscape like a decaying tooth, its weatherboard walls sagging into the undergrowth. Silver's mother, Ishtar, has fallen for the charismatic Miller, and the three of them have moved to the rural hippie commune to make a new start.
At Hope, Silver finds unexpected friendship and, at last, a place to call home. But it is also here that, at just thirteen, she is thrust into an unrelenting adult world — and the walls begin to come tumbling down, with deadly consequences.
Hope Farm is the masterful second novel from award-winning author Peggy Frew, and is a devastatingly beautiful story about the broken bonds of childhood, and the enduring cost of holding back the truth.
It is the winter of 1985. Hope Farm sticks out of the ragged landscape like a decaying tooth, its weatherboard walls sagging into the undergrowth. Silver's mother, Ishtar, has fallen for the charismatic Miller, and the three of them have moved to the rural hippie commune to make a new start.
At Hope, Silver finds unexpected friendship and, at last, a place to call home. But it is also here that, at just thirteen, she is thrust into an unrelenting adult world — and the walls begin to come tumbling down, with deadly consequences.
Hope Farm is the masterful second novel from award-winning author Peggy Frew, and is a devastatingly beautiful story about the broken bonds of childhood, and the enduring cost of holding back the truth.
343 pages, Paperback
First published September 23, 2015
53 people are currently reading
2368 people want to read
About the author
Peggy Frew
7 books96 followersPeggy Frew's debut novel, House of Sticks, won the 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. Her story 'Home Visit' won The Age short story competition. She has been published in New Australian Stories 2, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue, and Meanjin. Peggy is also a member of the critically acclaimed and award-winning Melbourne band Art of Fighting.
Hope Farm is her latest novel, published in 2015.
Hope Farm is her latest novel, published in 2015.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 185 reviews
October 15, 2015
Somewhat strangely, this is the third book I've read this year narrated by a kid who grew up in some sort of communal hippie arrangement (after Arcadia and The World Without Us). I'm not sure what's prompted this spate of similarly themed books, but Peggy Frew has managed to bring something valuable to this odd little niche. Frew writes beautifully, with a real knack for describing the awkwardness of adolescence and the frustrating love within families. The story is well crafted, and the result is an immensely readable book that is sad and moving.
October 19, 2019
The is a beautifully written, extremely compelling story.
In 1985, Ishtar under the spell of a new boyfriend, takes her thirteen year old child, Silver off to live at Hope Farm, which is a kind of sad, failed hippy commune. Silver's descriptions of the events of that year are absorbing and the engrossing story unfolds around the various personalities that affect Silver's life.
While Silver is 13 for the majority of the book and experiencing all the angst of teenage-hood, her first crush and the misery of not fitting in a the local school which is full of rural, farming kids this is emphatically not a YA book. Silver is telling about those experiences from the position of adulthood, and the novel is very much a mature one. The complexities of interpersonal relationships are nuanced and sympathetic and the reader is given a clear and uncompromising vision of how people can find their whole life out of control, moving away from them in ways they cannot control.
Central to the novel is the relationship between Silver and Ishtar. Ishtar is the center of Silver's life but she feels her mother is distant from her. While Ishtar's beuty, vivid personality and enchanting persona draw people to her all the time, Silver is constantly disappointed by unkept promises and has learnt to warily watch for the boredom and dissociation that Ishtar always experiences after every move and change loses the 'shin' of being new and exciting. Silver has lost count of the places they have lived, the boyfriends that come and go, the moves that she has been forced to endure. She longs for a settled 'normal' life with a home of her own in the way that other children may long for adventure.
At the end, the Hope Farm community disintegrates, Ishtar's relationship goes sour and then disaster strikes....
No spoilers from me, but after the storm has passed Silver makes a stand and gets the stability and normal life for herself that she wanted, but at the cost of parting ways from her mother and Ishtar travels on through life without her daughter.
The novel winds together the separate voices of Ishtar and Silver remarkably well, and the two separate storytellers slowly come together at the end to make a vivid story which manages somehow to be both hopeful and heartbreaking simultaneously. The sense of place that the novel has is excellent! Brisbane appears briefly, but most of the action takes place in Australian bushland and a rural community in Victoria. I felt as though I could smell the cold air while reading it! The place descriptions are not over the top in any way, they do not seem to be striving for literary merit (as some prize winners seem to be), but rather they sketch the places so perfectly that you feel you can see them on the insides of your eyelids.
Another great novel, from another great Australia author.
In 1985, Ishtar under the spell of a new boyfriend, takes her thirteen year old child, Silver off to live at Hope Farm, which is a kind of sad, failed hippy commune. Silver's descriptions of the events of that year are absorbing and the engrossing story unfolds around the various personalities that affect Silver's life.
While Silver is 13 for the majority of the book and experiencing all the angst of teenage-hood, her first crush and the misery of not fitting in a the local school which is full of rural, farming kids this is emphatically not a YA book. Silver is telling about those experiences from the position of adulthood, and the novel is very much a mature one. The complexities of interpersonal relationships are nuanced and sympathetic and the reader is given a clear and uncompromising vision of how people can find their whole life out of control, moving away from them in ways they cannot control.
Central to the novel is the relationship between Silver and Ishtar. Ishtar is the center of Silver's life but she feels her mother is distant from her. While Ishtar's beuty, vivid personality and enchanting persona draw people to her all the time, Silver is constantly disappointed by unkept promises and has learnt to warily watch for the boredom and dissociation that Ishtar always experiences after every move and change loses the 'shin' of being new and exciting. Silver has lost count of the places they have lived, the boyfriends that come and go, the moves that she has been forced to endure. She longs for a settled 'normal' life with a home of her own in the way that other children may long for adventure.
At the end, the Hope Farm community disintegrates, Ishtar's relationship goes sour and then disaster strikes....
No spoilers from me, but after the storm has passed Silver makes a stand and gets the stability and normal life for herself that she wanted, but at the cost of parting ways from her mother and Ishtar travels on through life without her daughter.
The novel winds together the separate voices of Ishtar and Silver remarkably well, and the two separate storytellers slowly come together at the end to make a vivid story which manages somehow to be both hopeful and heartbreaking simultaneously. The sense of place that the novel has is excellent! Brisbane appears briefly, but most of the action takes place in Australian bushland and a rural community in Victoria. I felt as though I could smell the cold air while reading it! The place descriptions are not over the top in any way, they do not seem to be striving for literary merit (as some prize winners seem to be), but rather they sketch the places so perfectly that you feel you can see them on the insides of your eyelids.
Another great novel, from another great Australia author.
April 11, 2016
I had such high hopes for this book. I was teary by page 16 and questioning my prior assertion that The Natural Way of Things was a dead cert to win the Stella Prize.
But, after such a promising beginning, it kind of falls flat. I totally get the intensity of Silver's yearning for the kind of parental love that has been absent. I also get how she has been shaped by her tumultuous childhood.
Ishtar, however, perplexes me. The adult relationships here seem cold and lifeless. Some of the events at Hope Farm seem kind of implausible and used as a means to an end, rather than advancing the story.
Despite these criticisms and my disappointment this still gets 3.5/5. It does work as a portrait of a dysfunctional mother and daughter relationship and an interesting chronicle of the time, it just doesn't reach the great heights I was expecting.
Charlotte Wood has still got it in the bag.
But, after such a promising beginning, it kind of falls flat. I totally get the intensity of Silver's yearning for the kind of parental love that has been absent. I also get how she has been shaped by her tumultuous childhood.
Ishtar, however, perplexes me. The adult relationships here seem cold and lifeless. Some of the events at Hope Farm seem kind of implausible and used as a means to an end, rather than advancing the story.
Despite these criticisms and my disappointment this still gets 3.5/5. It does work as a portrait of a dysfunctional mother and daughter relationship and an interesting chronicle of the time, it just doesn't reach the great heights I was expecting.
Charlotte Wood has still got it in the bag.
March 20, 2016
Okay. Clearly I don’t ‘get’ Peggy Frew.
It’s all ticker-tape parades and celebrations here on Goodreads for Hope Farm. And then there’s my two star rating, sitting alongside the glowing four and five-star reviews.
Hope Farm is the story of Silver and her mother, Ishtar. They have lived a nomadic hippie existence for all of Silver’s 13 years and, after Ishtar meets the charismatic Miller, they move to Hope Farm, a commune in rural Victoria. At Hope Farm, Silver sees her mother in a different light and questions their relationship.
“It was always the same. We had to leave because the energy had changed – something had faded, failed, gone wrong. There was probably a specific reason, probably to do with a man, but I never needed to look that far. I just saw it coming in Ishtar, in the flattening of her voice and movements, the dulling of her colours.”
People are raving about this book and I’m not. Why? It’s partially a style issue – I find Frew’s writing obvious and formulaic. Too much telling, not enough showing. The detail is flat and one-dimensional, leaving no room to fill in spaces or to speculate (because that’s how I become invested in a book) –
“That creek! The lightness of the flow of water; the warm, brown look of it – even though, when I put my hand in, it was so cold my fingers turned white and numb – the wet fissures in the big rocks that sat half submerged; the refractions of the amber light deep down, and the mossy-looking spotted fish that lazed there. Birds seemed to burst with pleasure out of the canopy of bush, hurtling their calls around, landing with an extra flourish to dip their heads and then lift and shake them, brash drops flying from their beaks.”
Creative Writing 101? It’s the height of rudeness but I couldn’t help compare Frew’s descriptions of the landscape to those in books such as Foal’s Bread and Mateship with Birds, which have a very different kind of precision.
The characters in the story were serviceable but there was nothing new, nothing to surprise me. The sense of place and time (the book is set in 1985) is thoroughly described but again, is exactly what I would expect a hippy commune to be like.
In summary, I didn’t learn anything new from this book. Not because I grew up on a commune in Nimbin and have first-hand experience (I didn’t and don’t) but because it felt like the detail was a regurgitation of every pot-smoking-not-enough-mung-beans-to-go-around-dirty-mattresses-on-the-floor hippie stereotype I’ve come across. Nothing about this story transported me to another place. Nothing made me gasp with surprise. Nothing made me want to read bits again.
2/5 Please someone, tell me why I’m wrong about this book. What did I miss?
It’s all ticker-tape parades and celebrations here on Goodreads for Hope Farm. And then there’s my two star rating, sitting alongside the glowing four and five-star reviews.
Hope Farm is the story of Silver and her mother, Ishtar. They have lived a nomadic hippie existence for all of Silver’s 13 years and, after Ishtar meets the charismatic Miller, they move to Hope Farm, a commune in rural Victoria. At Hope Farm, Silver sees her mother in a different light and questions their relationship.
“It was always the same. We had to leave because the energy had changed – something had faded, failed, gone wrong. There was probably a specific reason, probably to do with a man, but I never needed to look that far. I just saw it coming in Ishtar, in the flattening of her voice and movements, the dulling of her colours.”
People are raving about this book and I’m not. Why? It’s partially a style issue – I find Frew’s writing obvious and formulaic. Too much telling, not enough showing. The detail is flat and one-dimensional, leaving no room to fill in spaces or to speculate (because that’s how I become invested in a book) –
“That creek! The lightness of the flow of water; the warm, brown look of it – even though, when I put my hand in, it was so cold my fingers turned white and numb – the wet fissures in the big rocks that sat half submerged; the refractions of the amber light deep down, and the mossy-looking spotted fish that lazed there. Birds seemed to burst with pleasure out of the canopy of bush, hurtling their calls around, landing with an extra flourish to dip their heads and then lift and shake them, brash drops flying from their beaks.”
Creative Writing 101? It’s the height of rudeness but I couldn’t help compare Frew’s descriptions of the landscape to those in books such as Foal’s Bread and Mateship with Birds, which have a very different kind of precision.
The characters in the story were serviceable but there was nothing new, nothing to surprise me. The sense of place and time (the book is set in 1985) is thoroughly described but again, is exactly what I would expect a hippy commune to be like.
In summary, I didn’t learn anything new from this book. Not because I grew up on a commune in Nimbin and have first-hand experience (I didn’t and don’t) but because it felt like the detail was a regurgitation of every pot-smoking-not-enough-mung-beans-to-go-around-dirty-mattresses-on-the-floor hippie stereotype I’ve come across. Nothing about this story transported me to another place. Nothing made me gasp with surprise. Nothing made me want to read bits again.
2/5 Please someone, tell me why I’m wrong about this book. What did I miss?
August 20, 2019
Silver is used to living life in transit, growing up in various ashrams and communes, following the whims of her hippie/free spirited mother, Ishtar. When Ishtar falls under the spell of the charismatic leader of a hippie commune called Hope Farm, Silver and her mother relocate to the crumbling home and dilapidated farm. Once there, the culmination of their decisions rushes up to meet them in a devastating way.
.
I found this book enjoyable on multiple levels, some I wasn’t expecting. The story of a mother and daughter moving to a hippie commune with a charismatic leader reminiscent of Jim Jones, is a story I will read again and again. The dread and tension that builds with this book is palpable and had me racing towards the end. The hazy atmosphere Frew is able to create within these pages is one of my favorites.
.
Though I saw a few reviewers talk about the mother and daughter relationship being explored in this book, I wasn’t expecting the depth of this one. Interlaced with Silver’s story are her mothers words as she explains how she became pregnant with Silver and all of her decisions afterwards that led to where they are now. This format was the perfect way to show how a mothers decisions directly effect the life of her daughter. It also showed the disconnect sometimes between parent and child as Ishtar explains how all of this came to be but Silver, not knowing any of this, has to come to her own conclusions. I love any story that explores how sometimes we fall short of the daughter our mothers imagined, or they fall short of the mothers we imagined.
.
I also thought the friendship between Silver and a boy at her high school who is cruelly bullied was very interesting and reminded me of the tight rope a lot of us walked in our youth, trying to stay balanced between the adult world and the fishbowl of our high schools.
.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. The only thing that I didn’t like was the ending but I also don’t think it detracted that much from it.
.
I found this book enjoyable on multiple levels, some I wasn’t expecting. The story of a mother and daughter moving to a hippie commune with a charismatic leader reminiscent of Jim Jones, is a story I will read again and again. The dread and tension that builds with this book is palpable and had me racing towards the end. The hazy atmosphere Frew is able to create within these pages is one of my favorites.
.
Though I saw a few reviewers talk about the mother and daughter relationship being explored in this book, I wasn’t expecting the depth of this one. Interlaced with Silver’s story are her mothers words as she explains how she became pregnant with Silver and all of her decisions afterwards that led to where they are now. This format was the perfect way to show how a mothers decisions directly effect the life of her daughter. It also showed the disconnect sometimes between parent and child as Ishtar explains how all of this came to be but Silver, not knowing any of this, has to come to her own conclusions. I love any story that explores how sometimes we fall short of the daughter our mothers imagined, or they fall short of the mothers we imagined.
.
I also thought the friendship between Silver and a boy at her high school who is cruelly bullied was very interesting and reminded me of the tight rope a lot of us walked in our youth, trying to stay balanced between the adult world and the fishbowl of our high schools.
.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. The only thing that I didn’t like was the ending but I also don’t think it detracted that much from it.
February 21, 2016
I haven't gotten so shaky and so fully immersed in a book for what feels like a lifetime. Peggy Frew is a goddess with a pen. Or a computer, as it is these days. The finely wrought, delicate winding of the umbilical cord between women who are hurt, hopeful, loving and fearful is heartbreaking. Ishtar and her need to provide and protect - but who? Her daughter or herself? Her own mother - defiant and silent in her convictions. Silver - the catalyst and the observer and the narrator. Though set in the communes and ashrams of the 70s and 80s, there is a timeless quality to the story. It reminded me of Joan London's The Good Parents and this is the highest praise. Both immensely skilled, humane, poetic and articulate authors, they deserve to be lauded as classic Australian writers but also deserve international acclaim. This is rare talent and a rare story - it will make you want to hold the people you love, but also to keep them safely at a distance. It will make you wonder who looked at you with wonder once, screaming and covered in blood and knotted to another body. It will make you realise it's ok that love is fierce and primal but we can't choose our families or how they love us. We can only make choices that are right at the time. And live with them.
March 13, 2016
A sad and engaging story about the awkwardness of growing up when you don't fit in. I liked reading this from Adult Silver's perspective, her recollections of being 13. That allowed for more insight and analysis than would be believable coming from a 13 year old narrator.
January 2, 2022
This felt like a fairly familiar book – young ones cast astray amongst indifferent adults and hopeless hippies. Hardly happy but not totally tedious either.
July 28, 2016
‘But this was all bearable. I was used to it. I was cloaked in layers of difference, thirteen years deep; I didn’t expect this not to go unnoticed.’
Silver is aged thirteen in 1985 when she and her mother Ishtar move to a commune in rural Gippsland. The commune is named Hope Farm. Ishtar has moved because of the new man in her life: Miller. Ishtar is in love, and hopes that this relationship will last. Silver hopes for some stability in her life, for a home, to make friends. Silver meets Ian, who also seems to be an outcast. They spend time together, finding abandoned mines nearby.
Silver is looking back on her life at Hope Farm: one of a number of places she lived as a child. Why is Hope Farm particularly significant? Life here starts with high hope that it will be different from the past. It won’t be different, but Silver is older and more aware.
Silver’s is not the only story to unfold in this novel. In the 1970s, Ishtar was a pregnant teenager (then named Karen), under pressure from her family to give up her baby for adoption. She is sent to a home in Brisbane, but chooses not to give up her baby and instead moves into a commune. This is the beginning of Ishtar’s nomadic life, of the only life Silver will experience during her childhood.
Two lives blighted by circumstance: Silver is emotionally abandoned by Ishtar, while Ishtar is manipulated by Miller. Ishtar has kept a diary, which gives some sense of events and hints at her insecurities. Silver will eventually read this diary.
‘It is difficult to tell how much I took in when it was all actually happening and how much I have since pieced together, or made up.’
I found this a sad novel to read. I kept wondering how much better Silver’s life could have been if she’d had effective parenting. And how much better Ishtar’s life could have been if she’d not been rejected by her parents and had not been so insecure. How does a seventeen-year-old become a parent and grow into responsible adulthood in such circumstances? Ishtar’s wariness of authority decreases her options even further. So many secrets to keep, so many shoals to negotiate. While Silver escapes, thanks to Ian, her escape has its own cost. More secrets to be kept. Another dimension to survival.
‘When I go back to that time in my mind—Hope, and Miller and Dawn, and Dan and Ishtar, and Ian, and the series of collisions we were all sliding towards—that little hut glows at the centre of my recollections as some kind of gift, a fluked idyll, all the more beautiful for how fragile, how short-lived, how untenable it was.’
While I found the subject matter of this novel confronting, I am glad I read it. Life is about choices and the consequences of those choices. I felt variously sorry for and angry at Ishtar. I also felt sorry for Silver (and for her friend Ian) but was pleased that Silver escaped – physically, if not emotionally.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Silver is aged thirteen in 1985 when she and her mother Ishtar move to a commune in rural Gippsland. The commune is named Hope Farm. Ishtar has moved because of the new man in her life: Miller. Ishtar is in love, and hopes that this relationship will last. Silver hopes for some stability in her life, for a home, to make friends. Silver meets Ian, who also seems to be an outcast. They spend time together, finding abandoned mines nearby.
Silver is looking back on her life at Hope Farm: one of a number of places she lived as a child. Why is Hope Farm particularly significant? Life here starts with high hope that it will be different from the past. It won’t be different, but Silver is older and more aware.
Silver’s is not the only story to unfold in this novel. In the 1970s, Ishtar was a pregnant teenager (then named Karen), under pressure from her family to give up her baby for adoption. She is sent to a home in Brisbane, but chooses not to give up her baby and instead moves into a commune. This is the beginning of Ishtar’s nomadic life, of the only life Silver will experience during her childhood.
Two lives blighted by circumstance: Silver is emotionally abandoned by Ishtar, while Ishtar is manipulated by Miller. Ishtar has kept a diary, which gives some sense of events and hints at her insecurities. Silver will eventually read this diary.
‘It is difficult to tell how much I took in when it was all actually happening and how much I have since pieced together, or made up.’
I found this a sad novel to read. I kept wondering how much better Silver’s life could have been if she’d had effective parenting. And how much better Ishtar’s life could have been if she’d not been rejected by her parents and had not been so insecure. How does a seventeen-year-old become a parent and grow into responsible adulthood in such circumstances? Ishtar’s wariness of authority decreases her options even further. So many secrets to keep, so many shoals to negotiate. While Silver escapes, thanks to Ian, her escape has its own cost. More secrets to be kept. Another dimension to survival.
‘When I go back to that time in my mind—Hope, and Miller and Dawn, and Dan and Ishtar, and Ian, and the series of collisions we were all sliding towards—that little hut glows at the centre of my recollections as some kind of gift, a fluked idyll, all the more beautiful for how fragile, how short-lived, how untenable it was.’
While I found the subject matter of this novel confronting, I am glad I read it. Life is about choices and the consequences of those choices. I felt variously sorry for and angry at Ishtar. I also felt sorry for Silver (and for her friend Ian) but was pleased that Silver escaped – physically, if not emotionally.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
March 14, 2016
Oh wow, could not put this one down. So exquisitely told by two characters who cleverly share the narrative - loved how this was achieved. Frew weaves together a mix of characters that find resolution difficult, some triumph; some do not. There is a strong sense of murkiness, bewilderment and unease that is present right from the beginning to the very end. Well written, love Frew's style. Look forward to more in the future.
April 9, 2016
This year I made a commitment to read the six books shortlisted for the Stella Prize, which recognises writing by Australian female authors. I’d already read one last year (The Natural Way Of Things by Charlotte Wood) so that left me five to read. To help motivate me for this I signed up for the Stella bookclub where participants read one book a week to complete the shortlist before the winner is announced. There’s a Twitter chat each Monday night between 8-9pm where those who have read the book can join a hosted/led discussion. Hope Farm is the second of the five books I need to read to complete the shortlist and my favourite so far.
It’s the story of Silver, who at 13 is moving yet again with her single mother Ishtar. Silver’s life seems to be have been a kaleidoscope of sharehouses and commune-type things but they never seem to stay in one place for long. Ishtar meets Miller, a man with ideals to live sustainably and self-sufficiently on Hope Farm, located somewhere in Victoria’s Gippsland area. Silver and her mother travel two days by train to get there, arriving before Miller to a place that doesn’t particularly look like a utopia. There are several inhabitants, most of whom work at a nearby powdered milk factory in order to support the farm.
In theory, Hope Farm sounds awesome. I have to admit, there’s something so very attractive about the idea of being mostly self-sufficient – growing your own food, having a few animals to use for protein or barter. But the reality of these places is nearly always very different – it’s poverty, drugs, people who don’t know what they’re doing and blurred lines. Silver sees a lot, experiences a lot, things that she should probably be protected from. The narrative is almost all Silver’s which at first made me devote my sympathies and loyalties almost exclusively to her. But interspersed are diary entries, which after a couple become obvious that they’re written by Ishtar. They shed some light on her early decisions, what she sacrificed and the choices she made in order to be able to gain what she wanted. Whilst I didn’t always agree with Ishtar, the choices she made and how she was raising Silver, I did find myself coming to slowly admire her for her strength and determination. I think that she made a lot of those choices for the right reasons, she was searching for something but every time it looked like she found it, really what she’d found was just another form of oppression and the feeling of being stuck.
This book is set in the 1980’s, not that long ago in broad terms but there are attitudes and beliefs that have evolved significantly in many ways since then. Ishtar was only a teenager when she fell pregnant and in Queensland in the 1980’s with a religious mother, there were very few options that were open to her and the desperation that she felt was really quite heartbreaking. The more diary entries I read from Ishtar, the more of them I wanted to read – I felt as though her story was really only just touched on, those sparse entries just giving the reader enough to flesh out the rest in their imaginations. It’s impossible for that youthful idealism Ishtar had to remain untainted as she moves on again and again. It definitely affects her relationship with Silver and as the pattern continues, it also clearly affects the way that Silver sees her mother.
I have a bad record with prize winners – I almost never love the winner and sometimes I don’t even like or get any of the books chosen for a shortlist! I still keep trying though because reading shortlists helps me broaden my reading and get me out of my comfort zone a bit. I am happy to say that the two I’ve read so far from the shortlist for the bookclub have both been enjoyable, but this one is my favourite. I connected really strongly with Silver and the landscape as well. It’s set in a different part of Victoria to where I live but I could imagine what it would be like those cold winter nights with no heating, wearing pretty much every piece of clothing you own to stay warm. I lived rurally when I was younger too and my brother and I often explored the local area the way that Silver and her neighbour Ian explore the bush and the abandoned mineshafts. The novel built very well towards the climax, constructing a simmering atmosphere on the farm that was bound to boil over.
Hope Farm is beautifully written – I enjoyed it before we discussed it but that conversation only helped me appreciate it more. I think were it to win, it’d be a worthy choice.
It’s the story of Silver, who at 13 is moving yet again with her single mother Ishtar. Silver’s life seems to be have been a kaleidoscope of sharehouses and commune-type things but they never seem to stay in one place for long. Ishtar meets Miller, a man with ideals to live sustainably and self-sufficiently on Hope Farm, located somewhere in Victoria’s Gippsland area. Silver and her mother travel two days by train to get there, arriving before Miller to a place that doesn’t particularly look like a utopia. There are several inhabitants, most of whom work at a nearby powdered milk factory in order to support the farm.
In theory, Hope Farm sounds awesome. I have to admit, there’s something so very attractive about the idea of being mostly self-sufficient – growing your own food, having a few animals to use for protein or barter. But the reality of these places is nearly always very different – it’s poverty, drugs, people who don’t know what they’re doing and blurred lines. Silver sees a lot, experiences a lot, things that she should probably be protected from. The narrative is almost all Silver’s which at first made me devote my sympathies and loyalties almost exclusively to her. But interspersed are diary entries, which after a couple become obvious that they’re written by Ishtar. They shed some light on her early decisions, what she sacrificed and the choices she made in order to be able to gain what she wanted. Whilst I didn’t always agree with Ishtar, the choices she made and how she was raising Silver, I did find myself coming to slowly admire her for her strength and determination. I think that she made a lot of those choices for the right reasons, she was searching for something but every time it looked like she found it, really what she’d found was just another form of oppression and the feeling of being stuck.
This book is set in the 1980’s, not that long ago in broad terms but there are attitudes and beliefs that have evolved significantly in many ways since then. Ishtar was only a teenager when she fell pregnant and in Queensland in the 1980’s with a religious mother, there were very few options that were open to her and the desperation that she felt was really quite heartbreaking. The more diary entries I read from Ishtar, the more of them I wanted to read – I felt as though her story was really only just touched on, those sparse entries just giving the reader enough to flesh out the rest in their imaginations. It’s impossible for that youthful idealism Ishtar had to remain untainted as she moves on again and again. It definitely affects her relationship with Silver and as the pattern continues, it also clearly affects the way that Silver sees her mother.
I have a bad record with prize winners – I almost never love the winner and sometimes I don’t even like or get any of the books chosen for a shortlist! I still keep trying though because reading shortlists helps me broaden my reading and get me out of my comfort zone a bit. I am happy to say that the two I’ve read so far from the shortlist for the bookclub have both been enjoyable, but this one is my favourite. I connected really strongly with Silver and the landscape as well. It’s set in a different part of Victoria to where I live but I could imagine what it would be like those cold winter nights with no heating, wearing pretty much every piece of clothing you own to stay warm. I lived rurally when I was younger too and my brother and I often explored the local area the way that Silver and her neighbour Ian explore the bush and the abandoned mineshafts. The novel built very well towards the climax, constructing a simmering atmosphere on the farm that was bound to boil over.
Hope Farm is beautifully written – I enjoyed it before we discussed it but that conversation only helped me appreciate it more. I think were it to win, it’d be a worthy choice.
November 1, 2015
Isn’t the cover of Hope Farm gorgeous? I love the way it looks almost 3D and the earth/leaf litter motif is quite symbolic of many people in the book, trying to return to what they believe a natural existence to be. But the real bonus is that the contents of Hope Farm are just as brilliant. I loved this mesmerising story of Silver and her mother Ishtar, who lead a somewhat unconventional existence in the mid-1980s.
Some would call Ishtar a hippie, as she’s lived in ashrams on and off since Silver was born, plus she’s into the whole free love thing. She did vegetarianism and yoga before it was cool. But to Silver, Ishtar is somewhat of a mystery. Silver, now a teenager, longs for somewhere to be call home and be settled instead of moving from place to place. When Ishtar announces they’re moving from Queensland to Hope Farm in Victoria with her new boyfriend, Silver gets a chance to stay somewhere for a little while. Sure, she still gets called ‘hippie shit’ at school and only has one friend (outside school only) in Ian, but there are good things. There’s the annoying little pseudo sister in Jindi, the mother figure of Val and the crush worthy Dan. It looks like life could be stable in the Hope Farm community. But then things start to get complex. Ishtar’s boyfriend Miller brings a wife to Hope Farm and things get more complex, culminating in a night of terror and devastation none of the community will forget. It’s the night Silver loses the last of her childhood and sends her off on a life path she never thought possible.
Hope Farm is beautifully constructed novel and expertly shows Silver’s hurt, confusion and pain as she grows up knowing she’s different and desperately wanting what the other kids have – a home, routine and stability. It’s a coming of age story where the final part is ripped off brutally like a Band-Aid. What I also liked was how the reader got to see what happened to Silver as she grew into adulthood and dealt with the fateful events of the final night at Hope Farm. Peggy Frew also let the reader into the world of Ishtar with interspersed sections ‘written’ by her, detailing her journey from pregnancy to Hope Farm. I loved these as they gave a voice and perspective to Ishtar’s life which Silver didn’t have. They’re also written in an immature, childish hand (complete with punctuation errors and spelling mistakes) which made me feel sorry for her, being thrust into an adult world before she was ready for it (somewhat like Silver).
The drama in Hope Farm builds slowly, but the reader is ultimately rewarded as the finale is frantic. All the small dramas tie together to form a huge event that affects everyone. I think it is made more powerful by knowing the characters intimately by this stage. There were some I was instantly worried about (Jindi who is cute, even though she’s annoying and continually dripping snot; Ian, Silver’s friend with a turn of phrase like a 50’s movie star and Dan, possibly the most ‘normal’ person at Hope Farm). Of course, I had to cross my fingers and hope (no pun intended) for Miller’s downfall. Miller was just plain creepy (the language Frew uses to describe him sent a shiver down my spine) and every move of his was questionable. It seemed like he had plans to become a cult leader (and probably would have if he wasn’t so damn lazy).
I found myself racing through the book once I got past the first 50 pages as there’s so many interesting characters with stories to tell and is written in such a way that you can easily visualise the story. Highly recommended.
Thank you to Scribe Publications for the copy. My review is honest.
http://samstillreading.wordpress.com
Some would call Ishtar a hippie, as she’s lived in ashrams on and off since Silver was born, plus she’s into the whole free love thing. She did vegetarianism and yoga before it was cool. But to Silver, Ishtar is somewhat of a mystery. Silver, now a teenager, longs for somewhere to be call home and be settled instead of moving from place to place. When Ishtar announces they’re moving from Queensland to Hope Farm in Victoria with her new boyfriend, Silver gets a chance to stay somewhere for a little while. Sure, she still gets called ‘hippie shit’ at school and only has one friend (outside school only) in Ian, but there are good things. There’s the annoying little pseudo sister in Jindi, the mother figure of Val and the crush worthy Dan. It looks like life could be stable in the Hope Farm community. But then things start to get complex. Ishtar’s boyfriend Miller brings a wife to Hope Farm and things get more complex, culminating in a night of terror and devastation none of the community will forget. It’s the night Silver loses the last of her childhood and sends her off on a life path she never thought possible.
Hope Farm is beautifully constructed novel and expertly shows Silver’s hurt, confusion and pain as she grows up knowing she’s different and desperately wanting what the other kids have – a home, routine and stability. It’s a coming of age story where the final part is ripped off brutally like a Band-Aid. What I also liked was how the reader got to see what happened to Silver as she grew into adulthood and dealt with the fateful events of the final night at Hope Farm. Peggy Frew also let the reader into the world of Ishtar with interspersed sections ‘written’ by her, detailing her journey from pregnancy to Hope Farm. I loved these as they gave a voice and perspective to Ishtar’s life which Silver didn’t have. They’re also written in an immature, childish hand (complete with punctuation errors and spelling mistakes) which made me feel sorry for her, being thrust into an adult world before she was ready for it (somewhat like Silver).
The drama in Hope Farm builds slowly, but the reader is ultimately rewarded as the finale is frantic. All the small dramas tie together to form a huge event that affects everyone. I think it is made more powerful by knowing the characters intimately by this stage. There were some I was instantly worried about (Jindi who is cute, even though she’s annoying and continually dripping snot; Ian, Silver’s friend with a turn of phrase like a 50’s movie star and Dan, possibly the most ‘normal’ person at Hope Farm). Of course, I had to cross my fingers and hope (no pun intended) for Miller’s downfall. Miller was just plain creepy (the language Frew uses to describe him sent a shiver down my spine) and every move of his was questionable. It seemed like he had plans to become a cult leader (and probably would have if he wasn’t so damn lazy).
I found myself racing through the book once I got past the first 50 pages as there’s so many interesting characters with stories to tell and is written in such a way that you can easily visualise the story. Highly recommended.
Thank you to Scribe Publications for the copy. My review is honest.
http://samstillreading.wordpress.com
February 15, 2018
The author's ability to reveal the motivations and personalities of characters subtlety but with pin-point accuracy was the stand-out feature of Hope Farm. The language of the first person narrative of the teenager Silver was luminous and expansive; it contrasted markedly with the simply written, pain-filled recollections of her mother Ishtar. The novel's finely drawn and evocative Australian setting added greatly to its appeal.
The first half of Hope Farm was especially engaging but my interest faltered when character development and exploration gave way to a more 'action' driven narrative in the later stages of the novel.
3.5 stars
The first half of Hope Farm was especially engaging but my interest faltered when character development and exploration gave way to a more 'action' driven narrative in the later stages of the novel.
3.5 stars
August 27, 2016
Another winner from the Stella Prize shortlist. I had a weird bias against this, based on my interpretation of the blurb (kid grows up in hippie commune – did not sound like my thing) and an idea that it couldn’t possibly be as good as the other books on the shortlist. But of course it was! It’s set in 1985 and told from alternating points of view – thirteen year old Silver and her young mother Ishtar; Silver’s part details their move from a commune in Brisbane to a farm in chilly Victoria while Ishtar’s is about the consequences of finding herself pregnant at 17. The Ishtar passages are really powerful and heartbreaking; I’d formed a fairly negative impression of her from her daughter, only to realise that I’d misjudged her. And it was horrible, as it went along, to see that she’d had zero opportunities to change her circumstances. It did think the structure was off in a way, or maybe I’ve just had my expectations set by other books – but it seemed odd to me that but it was not an uplifting read. It was however pretty great and deserves to get more attention.
June 29, 2016
(**3.5**)
I have many reading projects this year, one of which is to get back to reading contemporary Australian authors. I was helped along in this endeavour by collecting up the entire Miles Franklin shortlist, the novels of which all look outstanding. I start this project with Peggy Frew's Hope Farm, a novel of which I am tempted to label an Australian version of Lauren Groff's Arcardia. The alternative lifestyle and child narrator being the most obvious similarities. I quite enjoy a good "commune story" - the inevitable chaos caused by communal living, drugs, megalomaniacal leaders and shattered utopian dreams. All the expected elements are here but what I enjoyed most was the compelling and complicated relationship between Ishtar and her daughter Silver, it seemed to me a good portrait of an adolescent mindset. The sense of place is very strong in this book - there is a lot of galavanting around in the Gippsland bush and I forgave the book some faults just because I enjoyed being in an Australian novel again. There is a kernel of something really good here, particularly in the strong first half but unfortunately it is not enough to make this book really stand out in my mind.
I have many reading projects this year, one of which is to get back to reading contemporary Australian authors. I was helped along in this endeavour by collecting up the entire Miles Franklin shortlist, the novels of which all look outstanding. I start this project with Peggy Frew's Hope Farm, a novel of which I am tempted to label an Australian version of Lauren Groff's Arcardia. The alternative lifestyle and child narrator being the most obvious similarities. I quite enjoy a good "commune story" - the inevitable chaos caused by communal living, drugs, megalomaniacal leaders and shattered utopian dreams. All the expected elements are here but what I enjoyed most was the compelling and complicated relationship between Ishtar and her daughter Silver, it seemed to me a good portrait of an adolescent mindset. The sense of place is very strong in this book - there is a lot of galavanting around in the Gippsland bush and I forgave the book some faults just because I enjoyed being in an Australian novel again. There is a kernel of something really good here, particularly in the strong first half but unfortunately it is not enough to make this book really stand out in my mind.
May 21, 2017
Hope Farm is another example of how great Australian literature is at the moments. The novel captures the awkwardness of growing up and not fitting in with a sometimes bleak honesty that continues to resonate once the novel is done. Although a little slow to begin with, Frew develops her flawed characters carefully throughout. At the end you are left both understanding of their frustrations and empathetic of their weaknesses. This was a great read.
October 26, 2019
Wow!! Loved it. The story of a 13 year old girl, Silver, who with her mother, Ishtar, goes to live on a commune in country Victoria. A life of moving around and looking for somewhere to belong. This book looks at the parallel lives of Silver and Ishtar. How they came to be where they are. A look into the world of a young single mother looking to find something, but she doesn't know what it is.
I loved the story of the young Silver becoming her own personal as she travels into the teenage years. Finding friendship with Ian, and the struggles to belong in a world that changes whenever Ishtar feels the need to move on again.
The world of Hope Farm is one with many people looking for something and somewhere to belong. Will Ishtar and Silver find a place to belong and settle down? Will Miller be the answer to finding a family? Read on and find out......
I loved the story of the young Silver becoming her own personal as she travels into the teenage years. Finding friendship with Ian, and the struggles to belong in a world that changes whenever Ishtar feels the need to move on again.
The world of Hope Farm is one with many people looking for something and somewhere to belong. Will Ishtar and Silver find a place to belong and settle down? Will Miller be the answer to finding a family? Read on and find out......
March 3, 2016
He's a greasy little sleazeball, is the young Charlie Manson - as portrayed in 'Aquarius'. But he is seemingly a charismatic figure to the impressionable young maidens who bound around him. They hang out and do the drug thing at his urban commune - such a happening place. Eventually he coerces his teenage acolytes to do deeds for him that he perceives will contribute to him reaching his destiny - later on these will become the epitome of evil. For now his vicious streak is already starting to show - he's not a person you cross without expecting retribution. I've only watched one episode of the series to date. It seemed somewhat cheesy in places, but I'll stick with it. For you see it stars David Duchovny as your stereotypical rumpled cop, and after 'Californication', I am besotted by David D and the roles he makes his own.
But, I suppose, in the strictest sense, Gippsland's Hope Farm, back in the eighties, was not a commune. It labelled itself an ashram, and I presume there is a difference, despite both being filled with a loose idea about boundaries within personal relationships. In Frew's eponymous novel the height of flower power is long past, but a group of disparate, mostly ageing, hippies are hanging on at Hope Farm. The place has seen better days, as have most of its communards, but in the novel they are being introduced to New Age mumbo-jumbo by another charismatic figure - Miller. In contrast to Manson, his intent was purer, but still he seemed to have an effect on the ladies, managing to wheedle money out of them. He's a big hairy bear of a man. Ishtar was soon in his thrall.
Mostly, in Peggy Frew's 'Hope Farm', the hardscrabble life at the commune was seen through the eyes of an adult Silver, casting her mind back to her childhood there. Then she wanted a normal existence and she wanted a loving touch, but what she received from her distant mother, Ishtar, was a transitory existence. She moved from one ashram to another as her parent followed her dreams and men of uncertain quality. But at least at Hope Farm it all improved somewhat for Silver. She meets a mysterious boy down by the creek and he becomes a yearned-for friend of sorts. At the farm she experiences her first crush on a guy who, in turn, is besotted by Ishtar. And in the end an abandoned mine-shaft became Silver's salvation, leading to an anchored life.
Frew displayed, with her first novel, 'House of Sticks', an ability to present a story of the human condition that looks at fractured relationships amongst urban Australians who haven't quite made it into the mainstream. 'Hope Farm' is a very strong follow-up. It kept this reader engaged from cover to cover. I'm not completely sure if the device of having the diary entries of semi-literate Ishtah, interspersed throughout most of Silver's narrative, is completely convincing. That aside, Frew has shown that she is a vibrant new voice on our recent national condition, conveyed in fiction form.
In the end Miller was no Charlie Manson. The hold he had over those around him was no where near as total as Manson's, so errors along the way soon caused his world start to unravel. Once he lost control of those he expected to pander to his mental well-being - they being never fully convinced in the first place - his end is inglorious. The put-upon figure of Ian, the lad by the creek, comes out of it all very well as maybe the hero of the piece. Help arrives for Silver from an unlikely source. Frew is skilled with juggling all the threads and is considerate to her readers in not allowing any to dangle. She leaves her surely growing list of fans well sated. I like her for that. Roll on novel three.
But, I suppose, in the strictest sense, Gippsland's Hope Farm, back in the eighties, was not a commune. It labelled itself an ashram, and I presume there is a difference, despite both being filled with a loose idea about boundaries within personal relationships. In Frew's eponymous novel the height of flower power is long past, but a group of disparate, mostly ageing, hippies are hanging on at Hope Farm. The place has seen better days, as have most of its communards, but in the novel they are being introduced to New Age mumbo-jumbo by another charismatic figure - Miller. In contrast to Manson, his intent was purer, but still he seemed to have an effect on the ladies, managing to wheedle money out of them. He's a big hairy bear of a man. Ishtar was soon in his thrall.
Mostly, in Peggy Frew's 'Hope Farm', the hardscrabble life at the commune was seen through the eyes of an adult Silver, casting her mind back to her childhood there. Then she wanted a normal existence and she wanted a loving touch, but what she received from her distant mother, Ishtar, was a transitory existence. She moved from one ashram to another as her parent followed her dreams and men of uncertain quality. But at least at Hope Farm it all improved somewhat for Silver. She meets a mysterious boy down by the creek and he becomes a yearned-for friend of sorts. At the farm she experiences her first crush on a guy who, in turn, is besotted by Ishtar. And in the end an abandoned mine-shaft became Silver's salvation, leading to an anchored life.
Frew displayed, with her first novel, 'House of Sticks', an ability to present a story of the human condition that looks at fractured relationships amongst urban Australians who haven't quite made it into the mainstream. 'Hope Farm' is a very strong follow-up. It kept this reader engaged from cover to cover. I'm not completely sure if the device of having the diary entries of semi-literate Ishtah, interspersed throughout most of Silver's narrative, is completely convincing. That aside, Frew has shown that she is a vibrant new voice on our recent national condition, conveyed in fiction form.
In the end Miller was no Charlie Manson. The hold he had over those around him was no where near as total as Manson's, so errors along the way soon caused his world start to unravel. Once he lost control of those he expected to pander to his mental well-being - they being never fully convinced in the first place - his end is inglorious. The put-upon figure of Ian, the lad by the creek, comes out of it all very well as maybe the hero of the piece. Help arrives for Silver from an unlikely source. Frew is skilled with juggling all the threads and is considerate to her readers in not allowing any to dangle. She leaves her surely growing list of fans well sated. I like her for that. Roll on novel three.
Read
July 30, 2019Peggy Frew is an amazing writer and Hope Farm is a great novel that captures the pleasures and difficulties of being both a parent and of being a child. The complex story of Silver and Ishtar and their fraught relationship is beautifully written, acutely observed and, best of all, completely absorbing. I could almost feel the crisp Gippsland mornings, hear the birds warbling and smell the stale dope smoke. Hope Farm is elegant, tender and very wise.
Chris Womersley, Award-Winning Author of Cairo and Bereft
[E]legiac, storied … aligns itself with other novels in which children — out of rashness, anger or even ignorance — act out to terrible consequences. As with Briony in Ian McEwan’s Atonemen or Leo in L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between, these decisions are usually compounded by circumstance … Frew does not want to pass judgment though. She understands that the sadness of childhood is to grow up in circumstances over which you have little or no control.
Jessica AU, Sydney Morning Herald
Peggy Frew’s novel, Hope Farm, tells an original tale, drawing into the body of Australian literary fiction, a world between the cracks. Peggy’s voice is contemporary, her observations sharp and sensitive. Hope Farm describes the cycle of loss and damage when there are no boundaries to protect us.
Sofie Laguna, Author of The Eye of the Sheep, 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award Winner
Frew’s deceptively slow-burn tale of a teenage girl — adrift, bewildered, seeking solidity — moves inexorably to its climax, laying bare a certain darkness at the heart of the alternative lifestyle. But it's the tale of a survivor, too.
Luke Davies, Award-Winning Author of Candy
At this point it could be too early to call it, but I’m thinking this could end up on my top 10 books of the year list … Beautifully written, difficult to put down, hard not to feel the ache.
Geelong Advertiser
In its exploration of maternal, sexual, unrequited and platonic relationships, Hope Farm is a finely calibrated study of love, loss and belonging.
Thuy On, Sunday Age
[An] assured exploration of that awkward moment between childhood and the teenage years [as well as a] devastating critique of the treatment of unwed mothers in the ’70s.
Margot Lloyd, Adelaide Advertiser
Frew is a gifted writer, evidenced here by finely balanced observations and atmospheric description … Silver is poised at the beginning of adult understanding and Frew handles the challenge with deftness. Silver’s insight and compassion are juxtaposed with naivety and the idealistic force of her first crushes.
Ed Wright, Weekend Australian
Absorbing ... A beautifully-told story of courage and survival, Hope Farm is about growing up, belonging, and long-kept secrets.
Carys Bray, Author of A Song for Issy Bradley
Reading [Hope Farm] made me feel as though I’d lived it. So darn clever.
Clare Bowditch
Frew’s second novel is an Australian cousin of T.C. Boyle’s Drop City, Lauren Groff’s Arcadia, and other novels about the failures of communal living, with additional connections to Esther Freud’s Hideous Kinky and Ian McEwan’s Atonement.
Kirkus Reviews
Chris Womersley, Award-Winning Author of Cairo and Bereft
[E]legiac, storied … aligns itself with other novels in which children — out of rashness, anger or even ignorance — act out to terrible consequences. As with Briony in Ian McEwan’s Atonemen or Leo in L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between, these decisions are usually compounded by circumstance … Frew does not want to pass judgment though. She understands that the sadness of childhood is to grow up in circumstances over which you have little or no control.
Jessica AU, Sydney Morning Herald
Peggy Frew’s novel, Hope Farm, tells an original tale, drawing into the body of Australian literary fiction, a world between the cracks. Peggy’s voice is contemporary, her observations sharp and sensitive. Hope Farm describes the cycle of loss and damage when there are no boundaries to protect us.
Sofie Laguna, Author of The Eye of the Sheep, 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award Winner
Frew’s deceptively slow-burn tale of a teenage girl — adrift, bewildered, seeking solidity — moves inexorably to its climax, laying bare a certain darkness at the heart of the alternative lifestyle. But it's the tale of a survivor, too.
Luke Davies, Award-Winning Author of Candy
At this point it could be too early to call it, but I’m thinking this could end up on my top 10 books of the year list … Beautifully written, difficult to put down, hard not to feel the ache.
Geelong Advertiser
In its exploration of maternal, sexual, unrequited and platonic relationships, Hope Farm is a finely calibrated study of love, loss and belonging.
Thuy On, Sunday Age
[An] assured exploration of that awkward moment between childhood and the teenage years [as well as a] devastating critique of the treatment of unwed mothers in the ’70s.
Margot Lloyd, Adelaide Advertiser
Frew is a gifted writer, evidenced here by finely balanced observations and atmospheric description … Silver is poised at the beginning of adult understanding and Frew handles the challenge with deftness. Silver’s insight and compassion are juxtaposed with naivety and the idealistic force of her first crushes.
Ed Wright, Weekend Australian
Absorbing ... A beautifully-told story of courage and survival, Hope Farm is about growing up, belonging, and long-kept secrets.
Carys Bray, Author of A Song for Issy Bradley
Reading [Hope Farm] made me feel as though I’d lived it. So darn clever.
Clare Bowditch
Frew’s second novel is an Australian cousin of T.C. Boyle’s Drop City, Lauren Groff’s Arcadia, and other novels about the failures of communal living, with additional connections to Esther Freud’s Hideous Kinky and Ian McEwan’s Atonement.
Kirkus Reviews
May 18, 2016
Hope Farm is Peggy Frew’s second novel, and it’s longlisted for the 2016 Miles Franklin Award. Although its setting is a hippie commune in decline, it’s an elegy for kids brought up in dysfunctional circumstances anywhere.
Silver, looking back on her childhood and the traumatic events of her thirteenth year in 1985, narrates most of the story, with interleaved excerpts from her mother’s memoir filling in her own backstory. Her mother is Ishtar née Karen, who embraced the communal lifestyle when at seventeen she became pregnant and it seemed like the only alternative to giving up her baby. Their subsequent life involved trailing around from one commune to another, Ishtar chasing the love she didn’t get from her parents when she needed it, and Silver – initially the sole object of Ishtar’s love and attention – gradually becoming wise beyond her years as she observes her mother’s immaturity fracture their relationship.
By the time they get to Hope Farm in rural Gippsland, Silver has become inured to neglect and squalor, and she absorbs with stoicism the taunts of her schoolfellows at each successive school. She longs for a stable home but has no illusions about her mother’s latest boyfriend, Miller. He makes a noisy entrance to the commune and spruiks lots of grand plans, but he doesn’t even know enough about farming to recognise that a self-seeded pumpkin vine isn’t going to produce any pumpkins once the summer is over. He starts projects but lets them lapse, and soon he and Ishtar join the rest of the residents in a fog of inertia, booze and drugs.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/05/18/h...
Silver, looking back on her childhood and the traumatic events of her thirteenth year in 1985, narrates most of the story, with interleaved excerpts from her mother’s memoir filling in her own backstory. Her mother is Ishtar née Karen, who embraced the communal lifestyle when at seventeen she became pregnant and it seemed like the only alternative to giving up her baby. Their subsequent life involved trailing around from one commune to another, Ishtar chasing the love she didn’t get from her parents when she needed it, and Silver – initially the sole object of Ishtar’s love and attention – gradually becoming wise beyond her years as she observes her mother’s immaturity fracture their relationship.
By the time they get to Hope Farm in rural Gippsland, Silver has become inured to neglect and squalor, and she absorbs with stoicism the taunts of her schoolfellows at each successive school. She longs for a stable home but has no illusions about her mother’s latest boyfriend, Miller. He makes a noisy entrance to the commune and spruiks lots of grand plans, but he doesn’t even know enough about farming to recognise that a self-seeded pumpkin vine isn’t going to produce any pumpkins once the summer is over. He starts projects but lets them lapse, and soon he and Ishtar join the rest of the residents in a fog of inertia, booze and drugs.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/05/18/h...
June 4, 2017
This started off a little too downbeat for my liking, and I almost set it aside in favour of something a bit sparkier. Luckily, as I began to know the mother/daughter main characters better, I became more reconciled with the slow and quiet tone of the book.
Although there is a distinct plot, Hope Farm is about the relationship between Silver and her mother, Ishtar. Action, thoughts and feelings are opened up to our scrutiny in chapters alternating the respective points of view of Silver and Ishtar. It should be pointed out that Ishtar left school early, so her chapters are generally quite short and are written in her subliterate hand - this may be offputting for some readers.
As Silver grows older and begins to know her own mind better, it becomes harder and harder for her to be the loving daughter to her increasingly distant and disengaged mother. Events towards the end of the book provide a glimmer of possibility of rescue, and I thought Peggy Frew's handling of this was perfect.
Although there is a distinct plot, Hope Farm is about the relationship between Silver and her mother, Ishtar. Action, thoughts and feelings are opened up to our scrutiny in chapters alternating the respective points of view of Silver and Ishtar. It should be pointed out that Ishtar left school early, so her chapters are generally quite short and are written in her subliterate hand - this may be offputting for some readers.
As Silver grows older and begins to know her own mind better, it becomes harder and harder for her to be the loving daughter to her increasingly distant and disengaged mother. Events towards the end of the book provide a glimmer of possibility of rescue, and I thought Peggy Frew's handling of this was perfect.
September 12, 2016
3.5 stars.
Really tricky one! I loved the way it was written, and absolutely loved the characters. It was headed firmly for 5 stars, but towards the end it started to wilt a little. Still a good read.
Really tricky one! I loved the way it was written, and absolutely loved the characters. It was headed firmly for 5 stars, but towards the end it started to wilt a little. Still a good read.
October 26, 2016
Silver and her mother have moved from commune to commune for all of Silver's thirteen years. She is used to a life of sharing; food, jobs and bathrooms, never owning anything that belonged to her alone. When they arrive at Hope Farm in Victoria, Silver expects everything to be the same and is resigned to it all. While on the surface this seems to be true, there are many hidden currents here waiting to snag the unwary and Silver must make some life altering decisions.
The book is set in 1985 and Peggy Frew captures the language and the thought processes of the time, beautifully and brilliantly. We watch the story unfold slowly and serenely until its inevitable ending, unable to glance away and perhaps miss something. Hope Farm by Peggy Frew is a compelling read and it is wonderful that it is also set in Australia.
The book is set in 1985 and Peggy Frew captures the language and the thought processes of the time, beautifully and brilliantly. We watch the story unfold slowly and serenely until its inevitable ending, unable to glance away and perhaps miss something. Hope Farm by Peggy Frew is a compelling read and it is wonderful that it is also set in Australia.
Read
February 5, 2017DNF...? I feel terrible saying this! I think I'll return to this book another time. I read 'The Girls' by Emma Cline recently and felt that was a better written version of a similar situation/themes. I still want to read this though as everyone loves it so much, and it's set in Victoria, my home state. Alas, sometimes it's just not the right time to read certain books. Maybe in another year or two.
May 18, 2018
4 stars. A fresh voice, unique storyline and interesting subject matter.
Hope Farm is a rich fictional recollection on the life of a young mother and daughter living in a sludgy hippie commune in 1980's Victoria. This structureless community, with its drug infused ideals and lack of parenting, trigger traumatic events which lead to lifelong struggles.
Hope Farm is a rich fictional recollection on the life of a young mother and daughter living in a sludgy hippie commune in 1980's Victoria. This structureless community, with its drug infused ideals and lack of parenting, trigger traumatic events which lead to lifelong struggles.
March 14, 2016
The Stella long list is really bringing it this year(yes, I know the short list is already out and I'm very glad this made it). A curious, sad, book about families and secrets. The deeply ironic title only adds to the bleakness. I'm not sure I'm selling it but I really did love it.
September 8, 2019
Took me awhile to get into it, but once I did I haven’t been able to put it down
September 5, 2023
Изключително добра и силна книга. Поредната такава, която ме бъгва, че не е стигнала до масовият пазар и читател, и сигурно никога няма да стигне.
П р е к р а с н а 😭
П р е к р а с н а 😭
April 14, 2016
Parenthood is no simple or straight road, and long after birth there exists, still, symbiosis between parent and child. Peggy Frew's novel Hope Farm deftly explores the consequences of youthful decisions, the effect of silence on love, and how a parent can represent home to a child.
Thirteen-year-old Silver Landes is used to moving around between ashram and commune with her young, single mother Ishtar, but that doesn't stop her from yearning to have her mother to herself, and a place of their own - to just stop for long enough to have a real home. The move to Hope Farm in central Gippsland, Victoria is just the most recent dislocation in young Silver's life, another grand idea that Ishtar has bought into, another new man that Ishtar is following. This time it's a man Silver only knows as Miller: thirty-six, bearded and large, he sweeps her mother up in his plans for the hippie 'commune' of Hope Farm, a run-down property rented by an odd mix of ageing hippies who have become increasingly jaded. Ishtar hands over her savings to Miller to buy a car, which he registers in his own name, and then Silver accompanies her mother on the train while Miller uses the car to get new supplies for the farm.
While Ishtar disappears into Miller's possessive, intense and narcissistic embrace, Silver is - as always - left to fend for herself. She befriends fourteen-year-old Ian, a neighbour, though the constant bullying he receives at school creates a darkness in him that Silver begins to glimpse, and is scared by. She is also scared of Miller, with his complete possession of her mother and his pornographic and violent drawing hanging over the bed that clearly show his fatherhood aim. With the arrival of a surprise guest on the farm, this temporary home is further shaken and Silver is drawn along in the adults' wake, heading towards disaster.
Silver's narration of this period in her life comes from decades later, as a middle-aged woman still haunted by events and the emptiness and loneliness left by her mother. Her silent, pent-up rage and impotent hopes are clearly drawn, sharper-edged by time and honestly come by. Ishtar - as we learn from her own poorly-spelt journal writings that intersperse Silver's narration - was only sixteen when she fell pregnant, and completely ignorant of how it happened. Living in an ordinary suburb in Queensland with religious parents in the 70s, her mother's reaction is predictable and acutely heart-breaking: she is furious, and keenly aware of the shame that Ishtar will bring to her family. Ishtar has seen what happened to another girl who was in the same situation, around whom judgements and opinions still collect, and is passively swept up in her mother's plan. She is taken to Brisbane, to a home for girls like her; after the baby is born she will sign it away for adoption and return home, all in secret. But at the home she learns from another girl who has been there before that she has a choice, and Ishtar takes it.
The repercussions of Ishtar's choice are just as hard on her as they are on Silver, in the long term. Her mother refuses to see her again, leaving Ishtar to live without support or guidance in an ashram, with the people who helped her. At such a young age, Ishtar - who took that name to replace her own when she started living there - has to give up the remains of her childhood and work for no personal gain. She loves her baby dearly, but feels increasingly guilty for the noise the baby makes, and for loving her so much. Soon, depression takes hold of her and she grows colder towards her child.
The moves begin: she finds a man and moves to his commune, then moves to another ashram to escape, and so on. Her relationship with Silver becomes rote and silent, and while there are things about Ishtar that Silver has always known - like what her real name is - there are bigger things that Ishtar never speaks about, and Silver has no words for her mother's moods, and no one to turn to.
The consequences of shaming girls and women about their bodies, the secretiveness associated with sex and pregnancy and the judgemental attitudes of others all play their part in ruining Silver's relationship with her mother. I'm not sure that we've come all that far since, though at least we don't pack girls off to wait out their pregnancy in hiding, away from the neighbours' eyes. This happened to my own mother, who wasn't in a position to marry when she accidentally got pregnant, and who was sent off to a home run by nuns in Melbourne, and treated like she wasn't even human. Unlike Ishtar, though, my mother's story had a happy ending: she and the father - my father - did marry and start a family, and the baby they had to give up for adoption came back to us and is just as much part of the family, and loved, as the rest of us. The point remains, though, of what we do to each other in the process, and the unnecessary pain and feelings of being unloved it brings. For Silver, love for her mother is the emotion she has long buried. She feels like a burden, and the silence between the two only exacerbates this.
The irony in the name 'Hope Farm' is inescapable, and encompasses not only the dead dreams of the hippies who hoped to live self-sufficiently but who now work in factories in the nearby towns, smoking pot and aimlessly strumming the guitar when at home. It also highlights the hope that fills Ishtar, temporarily, with energy, and the hope that has long been suppressed within Silver but that surges up when the two find themselves living in a decrepit old miner's cottage that, at best, resembles a cubby-house with its shabby, makeshift furniture and lack of amenities (like a toilet). It is there that Silver's dream, her one real desire to live with Ishtar, just the two of them, in a place of their own is finally, but partly, realised. Ishtar falls into her worst depression yet, and the only upside is that she turns away Miller.
Miller is the character who wasn't quite realised for me, or not in the way that he was for Silver. It wasn't until towards the end of the book that I even realised that Silver saw him as a monster - this just didn't quite come across to me. I certainly didn't like him, and his brutishness - captured in the descriptions of his hair and size, the way he 'claims' Ishtar in a physical way - was exceptionally unappealing, but I didn't fear him. I didn't realise that Silver feared him. It could partly be because, as engaging and readable as this is, I had a lot of interruptions and took about two weeks to read it; those interruptions can make it hard to feel the tension and threat. Tension was another aspect that I didn't genuinely feel: Silver directly foreshadows the impending disaster when she tells us that they were all on a "collision course", but the only tension I felt was when Ian showed her the abandoned mine shaft and she was, rightly, spooked, and things were never quite so easy between them again. The tension was in wondering what role the mine shaft would play in the story, and knowing that it would. But that tension didn't grip me, certainly not in the way I want it to, or the way the novel implies I should have been. Still, his effect is made clear:
This is, undoubtedly, a sad novel. The sadness is in the sense of nostalgia that is vividly and realistically imagined, and in the disconnect between Silver and her mother, between a young girl desperately wanting to love her mother, and a mother trying to live life as if she weren't one. There is sadness in the dinginess and squalour of Hope Farm, in the painful, lonely and unloved nature of Silver's coming-of-age story. I came close to loving this novel, and in many ways I do love it: it is superbly written, even if the hoped-for tension wasn't quite there for me; it is memorable in its realism; and it is easy to connect to and empathise with, from the rural living 'out bush', which reminded me of where I grew up in central-north Tasmania, to the painful school bus rides and, most especially, the simple, unfulfilled hopes of Silver Landes, whose past - and especially her time at Hope Farm in 1985 - shaped her just as Ishtar's did, and not for the better.
This story will stay with me, as all well-written novels do that work on multiple levels, rich with symbolism and hidden layers just waiting to be unpacked. Above it all, I am left with this strong sense of familiarity, almost as if I had read this novel before, heard this story told another, earlier time - and I think this is not because it's a cliché, or Frew has ripped off some other book, but because it is such a human story, one that can speak to me and the girl that still lives inside me, suppressed maybe, but who - despite having had the loving family and stable home that Silver so yearns for - can still empathise with that hope and desire precisely because it is so vital. And because that sense of isolation and loneliness that Silver feels is so reminiscent of that period of our lives when we straddle childhood and adolescence. Frew writes with an openness that leaves me feeling vulnerable as I read, which directly relates to my ability to empathise with Silver. Mistakes are made on both sides, life is messy, and love is fragile and easily smothered.
Thirteen-year-old Silver Landes is used to moving around between ashram and commune with her young, single mother Ishtar, but that doesn't stop her from yearning to have her mother to herself, and a place of their own - to just stop for long enough to have a real home. The move to Hope Farm in central Gippsland, Victoria is just the most recent dislocation in young Silver's life, another grand idea that Ishtar has bought into, another new man that Ishtar is following. This time it's a man Silver only knows as Miller: thirty-six, bearded and large, he sweeps her mother up in his plans for the hippie 'commune' of Hope Farm, a run-down property rented by an odd mix of ageing hippies who have become increasingly jaded. Ishtar hands over her savings to Miller to buy a car, which he registers in his own name, and then Silver accompanies her mother on the train while Miller uses the car to get new supplies for the farm.
While Ishtar disappears into Miller's possessive, intense and narcissistic embrace, Silver is - as always - left to fend for herself. She befriends fourteen-year-old Ian, a neighbour, though the constant bullying he receives at school creates a darkness in him that Silver begins to glimpse, and is scared by. She is also scared of Miller, with his complete possession of her mother and his pornographic and violent drawing hanging over the bed that clearly show his fatherhood aim. With the arrival of a surprise guest on the farm, this temporary home is further shaken and Silver is drawn along in the adults' wake, heading towards disaster.
Silver's narration of this period in her life comes from decades later, as a middle-aged woman still haunted by events and the emptiness and loneliness left by her mother. Her silent, pent-up rage and impotent hopes are clearly drawn, sharper-edged by time and honestly come by. Ishtar - as we learn from her own poorly-spelt journal writings that intersperse Silver's narration - was only sixteen when she fell pregnant, and completely ignorant of how it happened. Living in an ordinary suburb in Queensland with religious parents in the 70s, her mother's reaction is predictable and acutely heart-breaking: she is furious, and keenly aware of the shame that Ishtar will bring to her family. Ishtar has seen what happened to another girl who was in the same situation, around whom judgements and opinions still collect, and is passively swept up in her mother's plan. She is taken to Brisbane, to a home for girls like her; after the baby is born she will sign it away for adoption and return home, all in secret. But at the home she learns from another girl who has been there before that she has a choice, and Ishtar takes it.
The repercussions of Ishtar's choice are just as hard on her as they are on Silver, in the long term. Her mother refuses to see her again, leaving Ishtar to live without support or guidance in an ashram, with the people who helped her. At such a young age, Ishtar - who took that name to replace her own when she started living there - has to give up the remains of her childhood and work for no personal gain. She loves her baby dearly, but feels increasingly guilty for the noise the baby makes, and for loving her so much. Soon, depression takes hold of her and she grows colder towards her child.
Finally when I went to bed she was still awake she must have been feeling better because she laughed and reached out her arms but all I wanted was sleep. I looked in to her face and no warm feeling came. I lay down with my back to her. She cuddled up to me and touched my hair but I lay like a block of concrete, there was this heavy sadness and some where deep under everything I wanted to break the spell and turn over and face her, it felt like an important thing to do but I just couldnt. I didnt move or make a sound and after a while she left me alone. And after that it was like some thing had broken and I couldnt fix it, I seemed to feel more and more tired like the love had been buried under the tiredness and every night I turned my back on her I lay there but I could never fall asleep because of the sad feeling I just lay listening to her breathing until she fell asleep. [p.146]
The moves begin: she finds a man and moves to his commune, then moves to another ashram to escape, and so on. Her relationship with Silver becomes rote and silent, and while there are things about Ishtar that Silver has always known - like what her real name is - there are bigger things that Ishtar never speaks about, and Silver has no words for her mother's moods, and no one to turn to.
The consequences of shaming girls and women about their bodies, the secretiveness associated with sex and pregnancy and the judgemental attitudes of others all play their part in ruining Silver's relationship with her mother. I'm not sure that we've come all that far since, though at least we don't pack girls off to wait out their pregnancy in hiding, away from the neighbours' eyes. This happened to my own mother, who wasn't in a position to marry when she accidentally got pregnant, and who was sent off to a home run by nuns in Melbourne, and treated like she wasn't even human. Unlike Ishtar, though, my mother's story had a happy ending: she and the father - my father - did marry and start a family, and the baby they had to give up for adoption came back to us and is just as much part of the family, and loved, as the rest of us. The point remains, though, of what we do to each other in the process, and the unnecessary pain and feelings of being unloved it brings. For Silver, love for her mother is the emotion she has long buried. She feels like a burden, and the silence between the two only exacerbates this.
The irony in the name 'Hope Farm' is inescapable, and encompasses not only the dead dreams of the hippies who hoped to live self-sufficiently but who now work in factories in the nearby towns, smoking pot and aimlessly strumming the guitar when at home. It also highlights the hope that fills Ishtar, temporarily, with energy, and the hope that has long been suppressed within Silver but that surges up when the two find themselves living in a decrepit old miner's cottage that, at best, resembles a cubby-house with its shabby, makeshift furniture and lack of amenities (like a toilet). It is there that Silver's dream, her one real desire to live with Ishtar, just the two of them, in a place of their own is finally, but partly, realised. Ishtar falls into her worst depression yet, and the only upside is that she turns away Miller.
Miller is the character who wasn't quite realised for me, or not in the way that he was for Silver. It wasn't until towards the end of the book that I even realised that Silver saw him as a monster - this just didn't quite come across to me. I certainly didn't like him, and his brutishness - captured in the descriptions of his hair and size, the way he 'claims' Ishtar in a physical way - was exceptionally unappealing, but I didn't fear him. I didn't realise that Silver feared him. It could partly be because, as engaging and readable as this is, I had a lot of interruptions and took about two weeks to read it; those interruptions can make it hard to feel the tension and threat. Tension was another aspect that I didn't genuinely feel: Silver directly foreshadows the impending disaster when she tells us that they were all on a "collision course", but the only tension I felt was when Ian showed her the abandoned mine shaft and she was, rightly, spooked, and things were never quite so easy between them again. The tension was in wondering what role the mine shaft would play in the story, and knowing that it would. But that tension didn't grip me, certainly not in the way I want it to, or the way the novel implies I should have been. Still, his effect is made clear:
I glanced at Ishtar's one suitcase and duffel bag sitting in the corner. They looked their usual compact, neat selves, but even they were being encroached on by the huge, looming tide that was Miller's mess - and her bedspread, crumpled down at the foot of the mattress, appeared more worn that I remembered, and smaller. I turned slowly in the small central clearing. So much stuff. As if he conjured it with his hands, brought it bouncing and skittering into his orbit, to then fly along in his wake like iron filings following a magnet. Into my mind came the twin images of Miller lifting Ishtar and putting her into the car, and then lifting and carrying her into the room at the ashram - her yielding body, her transformed face. Then I saw him raising Jindi towards the night sky. The power in those arms, and the speed with which they snatched something up - a body, a whole person - and then just as quickly let it go again. [p.90]
This is, undoubtedly, a sad novel. The sadness is in the sense of nostalgia that is vividly and realistically imagined, and in the disconnect between Silver and her mother, between a young girl desperately wanting to love her mother, and a mother trying to live life as if she weren't one. There is sadness in the dinginess and squalour of Hope Farm, in the painful, lonely and unloved nature of Silver's coming-of-age story. I came close to loving this novel, and in many ways I do love it: it is superbly written, even if the hoped-for tension wasn't quite there for me; it is memorable in its realism; and it is easy to connect to and empathise with, from the rural living 'out bush', which reminded me of where I grew up in central-north Tasmania, to the painful school bus rides and, most especially, the simple, unfulfilled hopes of Silver Landes, whose past - and especially her time at Hope Farm in 1985 - shaped her just as Ishtar's did, and not for the better.
This story will stay with me, as all well-written novels do that work on multiple levels, rich with symbolism and hidden layers just waiting to be unpacked. Above it all, I am left with this strong sense of familiarity, almost as if I had read this novel before, heard this story told another, earlier time - and I think this is not because it's a cliché, or Frew has ripped off some other book, but because it is such a human story, one that can speak to me and the girl that still lives inside me, suppressed maybe, but who - despite having had the loving family and stable home that Silver so yearns for - can still empathise with that hope and desire precisely because it is so vital. And because that sense of isolation and loneliness that Silver feels is so reminiscent of that period of our lives when we straddle childhood and adolescence. Frew writes with an openness that leaves me feeling vulnerable as I read, which directly relates to my ability to empathise with Silver. Mistakes are made on both sides, life is messy, and love is fragile and easily smothered.
August 23, 2019
Hope Farm is the story of a girl named Silver coming of age in a commune named Hope after growing up in one communal home after another. She is a self-reliant and mature girl whose mother Ishtar is shamed when people praise her for how mature and tough her daughter is. She knows it a reflection of her own unreliability. Since Silver was born, she has moved from man to man and community to community. Now there are at Hope, a rundown, decrepit farm with a few other residents, most of them dispirited and resigned to eking out a subsistence life.
How did it come to this? We get hints in interstitial chapters from a journal Ishtar wrote describing her parents’ insistence she give up her baby when she became pregnant in high school, her “rescue” by a commune of women. A poor student, without her birth certificate, she is dependent on men and communes, drifting from one to another. Silver never has real security and even at Hope Farm where she begins to imagine the possibility, Silver feels unprotected and afraid of her mother’s newest lover, Miller a loud and self-important wannabe commune leader.
Peggy Frew excels at creating a sense of place, not just in her dscriptions of the natural surroundings, but also of the communes and the suspicious community near Hope. It all feels so real and tangible. Her characters are also well-executed and complex. Even Miller is allowed to be vulnerable and sympathetic while also being a villain in Silver’s eyes. We understand Ishtar and even though her shortcomings as a mother are obvious, we also see her complexity and her deep love for her daughter.
The mother-daughter conflict that is the heart of Hope Farm will break your heart, but it feels so authentic and for that very reason. Sometimes when it is most important for us to understand and communicate is exactly when it is most difficult.
Hope Farm will be released on September 3rd. I received an ARC from the publisher through LibraryThing.
Hope Farm at Scribe Publications
Peggy Frew on Facebook
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
How did it come to this? We get hints in interstitial chapters from a journal Ishtar wrote describing her parents’ insistence she give up her baby when she became pregnant in high school, her “rescue” by a commune of women. A poor student, without her birth certificate, she is dependent on men and communes, drifting from one to another. Silver never has real security and even at Hope Farm where she begins to imagine the possibility, Silver feels unprotected and afraid of her mother’s newest lover, Miller a loud and self-important wannabe commune leader.
Peggy Frew excels at creating a sense of place, not just in her dscriptions of the natural surroundings, but also of the communes and the suspicious community near Hope. It all feels so real and tangible. Her characters are also well-executed and complex. Even Miller is allowed to be vulnerable and sympathetic while also being a villain in Silver’s eyes. We understand Ishtar and even though her shortcomings as a mother are obvious, we also see her complexity and her deep love for her daughter.
The mother-daughter conflict that is the heart of Hope Farm will break your heart, but it feels so authentic and for that very reason. Sometimes when it is most important for us to understand and communicate is exactly when it is most difficult.
Hope Farm will be released on September 3rd. I received an ARC from the publisher through LibraryThing.
Hope Farm at Scribe Publications
Peggy Frew on Facebook
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
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