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A Perfect Square
GENRE: Literary Fiction/Metaphysical
Across two continents, two sets of mothers and daughters are bound by a dark mystery.
On a winter’s day in the Dandenongs, Victoria, pianist Ginny returns home to stay with her eccentric mother and artist, Harriet. Consumed by disturbing dreams, speculations and remembering, she tries to prise from her mother the truth concerning her father’s disappearance and why, when she was seven, Harriet abducted her. In an effort to distract her daughter’s interrogations, Harriet proposes they collaborate on an exhibition of paintings and songs.
Meanwhile, on the edge of Dartmoor, Judith paints landscapes of the Australian Outback to soothe her troubled mind. Her wayward daughter, Madeleine, has returned home and she’s filled the house with darkness. Her father doesn’t want to know her. Judith wishes he did. When at last she forces the two to meet she breathes a sigh of relief.
Back in Australia, Ginny is poised to fly to England in search of the truth when she receives some earth-shattering news.
A novel brimming with mystery and suspense, creativity, art and the occult.
Across two continents, two sets of mothers and daughters are bound by a dark mystery.
On a winter’s day in the Dandenongs, Victoria, pianist Ginny returns home to stay with her eccentric mother and artist, Harriet. Consumed by disturbing dreams, speculations and remembering, she tries to prise from her mother the truth concerning her father’s disappearance and why, when she was seven, Harriet abducted her. In an effort to distract her daughter’s interrogations, Harriet proposes they collaborate on an exhibition of paintings and songs.
Meanwhile, on the edge of Dartmoor, Judith paints landscapes of the Australian Outback to soothe her troubled mind. Her wayward daughter, Madeleine, has returned home and she’s filled the house with darkness. Her father doesn’t want to know her. Judith wishes he did. When at last she forces the two to meet she breathes a sigh of relief.
Back in Australia, Ginny is poised to fly to England in search of the truth when she receives some earth-shattering news.
A novel brimming with mystery and suspense, creativity, art and the occult.
266 pages, Paperback
Published August 29, 2016
4 people are currently reading
210 people want to read
About the author
Isobel Blackthorn
49 books176 followersIsobel Blackthorn is an award-winning author of unique and engaging fiction. She writes across a range of genres, including dark psychological thrillers, gripping mystery novels, captivating travel fiction and hilarious dark satire. Isobel holds a PhD in Western Esotericism for her groundbreaking study of the texts of Theosophist Alice A. Bailey. Isobel carries a lifelong passion for the Canary Islands, Spain, her former home. A Londoner originally, Isobel currently lives in Spain.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 26, 2020
Isobel Blackthorn is a gifted and insightful writer who has penned this slow burning and intellectually demanding literary read with its wide ranging themes on what it is to be a family and its dynamics, art, music, sources of inspiration, friends, mothers and daughters. It is skilful in its portrayal of the fraught relationships that can exist between mothers and daughters. In Melbourne, the painter Harriet is less than enamoured when her daughter, Ginny, a musician, moves back with the breakdown of her relationship with the douche bag that is Garth. In Devon, England, the painter and single mother, Judith, is less than happy that her daughter, Madeleine, is moving back home after the breakdown of her relationship. There are connections between the families as we discover later in the novel.
Ginny is bursting with a lifetime of resentment of Harriet who she believes 'abducted' her from her loving father. Rosalind's trip to England drives her need to discover her father. Growing up, Ginny learned to be obedient, to disappear and learned to listen behind closed doors in her frantic efforts to find out about her father and her conviction in Harriet's culpability in removing her from her beloved father. Harriet slowly reveals information, but her reasons for taking Ginny are dismissed and belittled. However, Ginny is having disturbing recurring dreams. What significance do they have? It is Rosalind's information on her father that Ginny takes seriously.
Harriet, in an effort to lift Ginny's depression, suggests they collaborate on a mixed media art project that centres on the Moon and its movements, and the planets over a period of time. This is greeted with little enthusiasm by Ginny. They agree to do it, encouraged by Phoebe, and work it around the number 9. Ginny will compose 9 musical compositions and Harriet will paint 9 pictures. This project tests their perceptions of themselves, the sources of their creativity and drives them both to the edge of their sanity. It is also the medium through which the two women recalibrate their difficult relationship with each other. To create a perfect square. At the same time, heartbreaking tragedy visits Judith in Devon.
Art, music and philosophy is discussed throughout, largely introspectively. They loom large in the lives, decisions, and the outlook of Harriet, Ginny, Phoebe, etc.. Harriet has been weighed down with her worship at the altar of Kandinsky and Klee, so much so that it appears to stifle her creativity. She is energised with her return to Bauhaus facilitated by Phoebe. The synaesthetic experience of music and art visits both Harriet and Ginny. The endurance of female friendships spans the entire novel and is a major theme. It is interesting to imagine where the story would have gone without their strength. A thought provoking novel with authentic and engaging characters. Highly recommended. Thanks to Odyssey Books for an ARC.
Ginny is bursting with a lifetime of resentment of Harriet who she believes 'abducted' her from her loving father. Rosalind's trip to England drives her need to discover her father. Growing up, Ginny learned to be obedient, to disappear and learned to listen behind closed doors in her frantic efforts to find out about her father and her conviction in Harriet's culpability in removing her from her beloved father. Harriet slowly reveals information, but her reasons for taking Ginny are dismissed and belittled. However, Ginny is having disturbing recurring dreams. What significance do they have? It is Rosalind's information on her father that Ginny takes seriously.
Harriet, in an effort to lift Ginny's depression, suggests they collaborate on a mixed media art project that centres on the Moon and its movements, and the planets over a period of time. This is greeted with little enthusiasm by Ginny. They agree to do it, encouraged by Phoebe, and work it around the number 9. Ginny will compose 9 musical compositions and Harriet will paint 9 pictures. This project tests their perceptions of themselves, the sources of their creativity and drives them both to the edge of their sanity. It is also the medium through which the two women recalibrate their difficult relationship with each other. To create a perfect square. At the same time, heartbreaking tragedy visits Judith in Devon.
Art, music and philosophy is discussed throughout, largely introspectively. They loom large in the lives, decisions, and the outlook of Harriet, Ginny, Phoebe, etc.. Harriet has been weighed down with her worship at the altar of Kandinsky and Klee, so much so that it appears to stifle her creativity. She is energised with her return to Bauhaus facilitated by Phoebe. The synaesthetic experience of music and art visits both Harriet and Ginny. The endurance of female friendships spans the entire novel and is a major theme. It is interesting to imagine where the story would have gone without their strength. A thought provoking novel with authentic and engaging characters. Highly recommended. Thanks to Odyssey Books for an ARC.
January 10, 2019
When Ginny returned home to the Dandenongs in Victoria, she was sad and resentful after a break-up, and mother Harriet begrudgingly welcomed her. Their views often clashed as Ginny was a pianist and Harriet was an artist who was used to her solitude. She thought Ginny could stay for a short while but as the stay lengthened, the tension between the women was obvious. Ginny’s constant questions about her father and what Harriet had done haunted her…
Across the ocean in England, another mother and daughter were also having issues. Judith’s daughter Madeleine was wanting to contact her estranged father, which Judith encouraged. Madeleine had also returned home after a break-up.
There would be secrets revealed; strain and tension kept both families company on a daily basis. But what could be the connection between the two families? So far apart, yet so similar.
A Perfect Square by Aussie author Isobel Blackthorn is a complex psychological thriller laced with suspense and mystery. I found the prose beautifully written but too wordy (in my opinion) The author knows how to involve her readers with the slow building climax which reached a chilling finish. Recommended to fans of literary thrillers.
With thanks to the author for my digital copy to read in exchange for an honest review.
Across the ocean in England, another mother and daughter were also having issues. Judith’s daughter Madeleine was wanting to contact her estranged father, which Judith encouraged. Madeleine had also returned home after a break-up.
There would be secrets revealed; strain and tension kept both families company on a daily basis. But what could be the connection between the two families? So far apart, yet so similar.
A Perfect Square by Aussie author Isobel Blackthorn is a complex psychological thriller laced with suspense and mystery. I found the prose beautifully written but too wordy (in my opinion) The author knows how to involve her readers with the slow building climax which reached a chilling finish. Recommended to fans of literary thrillers.
With thanks to the author for my digital copy to read in exchange for an honest review.
August 14, 2019
Harriet, living amid forests in Victoria, paints abstracts of the downs of south England. Judith, living in the south of England, and in another time line, paints landscapes of a country she has never seen, the Wimmera of her imagination. To the dismay of each, their respective daughters abruptly return home, escaping awful men, 'The Degenerate', 'The Troll'.
'Happenstance would lodge in (Harriet's) imagination, resonant with significances'. Ch. 1
A feast for the reader, this multi-layered novel is itself resonant with significances, increasingly disturbing, such as the recurring appearance of the triptych in black, white and grey by 'an unknown artist'. This was purchased by Harriet's agent Phoebe. But no buyer wants it. We learn it was commissioned by Judith's own business friend, Bethany, from Judith herself, who disliked painting it. Progressing from one deceased estate sale to another, this thing trails ominously across the novel.
More shadows disturb the gardens, friendships, music and art filling so much of the book: Ginny's nightmares, the conspiracy theories to which Judith feels morbidly drawn, Harriet's memory of 'a darkness' around Ginny's father, Wilhelm, the hints that Wilhelm,' The Lemurian', was immersed in something worse than merely criminal.
' Grey eyes that looked to the back of you with innocence and suspicion'. About pianist Ginny, Ch. 1.
Tensions between Harriet, who feels artistically stuck, and Ginny, determined to know why her mother abandoned her father, play out in the creative field. Harriet's art is rooted in the Bauhaus movement and Kandinsky's artistic theories of line, point and colour, most particularly of the possibility of synaesthesia. Even while we readers wonder at the connections between two women, two daughters, on far sides of the world, we are also treated to a skillful portrayal of the need for art, the drive to create. Harriet and Ginnys' creative battle itself shows the constant tension between the method and the artifice of it all on one hand and the desire to evoke something greater and nameless from it, on the other. Chromatic scales, in colour as well as in music, number theory, layers, curves, lines, correspondences, all tell their own story, combining into a new level as something the art 'evokes in the beholder or listener' (Kandinsky, Harriet). Or, could it be, as Ginny writes in her PHD on transformative experience, resulting in what the expression is 'for the person expressing it.' p.75.
'Too many composers view composition as something that happens to the individual, not something the individual steps inside. She thought otherwise'. Ginny. P 120.
Here for you to absorb for more than one viewing is a painting, or perhaps a novel, of intricate characters and their inner worlds, the whole ridden through with an increasing sense of dread that something is going to go horribly amiss.
Step inside.
'Happenstance would lodge in (Harriet's) imagination, resonant with significances'. Ch. 1
A feast for the reader, this multi-layered novel is itself resonant with significances, increasingly disturbing, such as the recurring appearance of the triptych in black, white and grey by 'an unknown artist'. This was purchased by Harriet's agent Phoebe. But no buyer wants it. We learn it was commissioned by Judith's own business friend, Bethany, from Judith herself, who disliked painting it. Progressing from one deceased estate sale to another, this thing trails ominously across the novel.
More shadows disturb the gardens, friendships, music and art filling so much of the book: Ginny's nightmares, the conspiracy theories to which Judith feels morbidly drawn, Harriet's memory of 'a darkness' around Ginny's father, Wilhelm, the hints that Wilhelm,' The Lemurian', was immersed in something worse than merely criminal.
' Grey eyes that looked to the back of you with innocence and suspicion'. About pianist Ginny, Ch. 1.
Tensions between Harriet, who feels artistically stuck, and Ginny, determined to know why her mother abandoned her father, play out in the creative field. Harriet's art is rooted in the Bauhaus movement and Kandinsky's artistic theories of line, point and colour, most particularly of the possibility of synaesthesia. Even while we readers wonder at the connections between two women, two daughters, on far sides of the world, we are also treated to a skillful portrayal of the need for art, the drive to create. Harriet and Ginnys' creative battle itself shows the constant tension between the method and the artifice of it all on one hand and the desire to evoke something greater and nameless from it, on the other. Chromatic scales, in colour as well as in music, number theory, layers, curves, lines, correspondences, all tell their own story, combining into a new level as something the art 'evokes in the beholder or listener' (Kandinsky, Harriet). Or, could it be, as Ginny writes in her PHD on transformative experience, resulting in what the expression is 'for the person expressing it.' p.75.
'Too many composers view composition as something that happens to the individual, not something the individual steps inside. She thought otherwise'. Ginny. P 120.
Here for you to absorb for more than one viewing is a painting, or perhaps a novel, of intricate characters and their inner worlds, the whole ridden through with an increasing sense of dread that something is going to go horribly amiss.
Step inside.
June 6, 2016
A Perfect Square is an absorbing literary thriller by author Isobel Blackthorn, which delivers a well-executed and thought-provoking ride towards a diabolically chilling climax.
Exquisitely written, the novel weaves its way around two, hauntingly similar stories, both based upon mother-daughter relationships, within which the daughters are troubled by absent fathers and wanting more attention or empathy from their artistic mothers.
The author, like an artist slowly dabbing paint upon a canvas, methodically yet tauntingly brings to life complex, damaged characters, their pasts, their struggles to relate to each other and the paths they are set upon.
By the time truths are revealed, the reader is fully involved and caring about the fate of the characters, fates that are disturbingly interchangeable, if not for the timing…
Timing, by the way of moon cycles, as well as art, music, creativity, synchronicity and mysticism are themes that litter this unique and intellectually engaging story. There is much to savour in the symbolism offered and in the beautifully crafted prose. But driving the reader forward is the sinister plot that slowly unfolds…
The novel begins with Ginny moving back home with her mother, Harriet, after breaking up with her boyfriend of three years.
Harriet, wanting to snap her daughter out of her depression, suggests to her that they could hold a joint exhibition. They decide after some contention that Harriet would create nine paintings; and Ginny would compose nine songs… inspiration for their works to be sourced from the moon’s movements in relation to the planets. Not every mother’s cheer-up remedy, but for Harriet, who Ginny perceives as “a mother so lacking in depth, so pretentious and arty”; it is the best she can devise.
Ginny agrees to the exhibition but as far as she is concerned she is: “in her mother’s house because she had nowhere else to go, here to reassess her life, here to make sense of her recent past, a past that catapulted her back on the search for answers, for revelations, for anything that would help her understand why she didn’t have a father.”
As Ginny pushes her mother to open up about her father, Harriet remains “too tight-lipped”, turning Ginny’s quest to understand the past into “a real present tense endeavour”.
Harriet, while wanting to protect her daughter, is not thrilled to have her back home, miserable and pushing for answers about her father. At the crux of it, Harriet fears that her daughter’s mood will “thwart her creativity”.
As mother and daughter are locked in each other’s orbit, like the moon and the planets that they are seeking inspiration from, their relationship waxes and wanes, and there are ups and downs, light and shade.
They approach their art as differently as they approach life, but in their own way they unlock their creativity. As the exhibition is finally pulled together, much more is unlocked and released.
Interspersed between mother and daughter tensions, is the unravelling of the story of Judith and her wayward daughter Madeleine.
Madeleine is also eager to seek out a relationship with her estranged father… but unlike the protective Harriet, Judith encourages contact.
What finally is produced, through the author’s cleverly paced revelations, is a dark, unsettling picture – the last dabs of paint are applied and the reader is left to watch in horror as the intertwined stories resolve.
The reader is no longer looking at crescents but a full moon, bright and harsh in its full circle. But light brings a new start too, after the dark.
There is so much to this layered novel. It is every bit a thriller – holding the reader, serving up pages of simmering suspense and startling secrets.
The author’s writing style is poetic, complex, fresh. Descriptions are purposeful and suggest much about the characters. For instance, Ginny’s obsession with paisley clothes, is her clutching to her childhood.
There is a strong sense of the feminine throughout – beyond the female characters and their strong female friendships, the reader can’t help but feel the over-riding feminine power of creativity, caves and cycles.
If looking for an intriguing, well-crafted story that at the end will have you biting your nails… then pick up A Perfect Square and immerse yourself in it. I strongly recommend it.
Exquisitely written, the novel weaves its way around two, hauntingly similar stories, both based upon mother-daughter relationships, within which the daughters are troubled by absent fathers and wanting more attention or empathy from their artistic mothers.
The author, like an artist slowly dabbing paint upon a canvas, methodically yet tauntingly brings to life complex, damaged characters, their pasts, their struggles to relate to each other and the paths they are set upon.
By the time truths are revealed, the reader is fully involved and caring about the fate of the characters, fates that are disturbingly interchangeable, if not for the timing…
Timing, by the way of moon cycles, as well as art, music, creativity, synchronicity and mysticism are themes that litter this unique and intellectually engaging story. There is much to savour in the symbolism offered and in the beautifully crafted prose. But driving the reader forward is the sinister plot that slowly unfolds…
The novel begins with Ginny moving back home with her mother, Harriet, after breaking up with her boyfriend of three years.
Harriet, wanting to snap her daughter out of her depression, suggests to her that they could hold a joint exhibition. They decide after some contention that Harriet would create nine paintings; and Ginny would compose nine songs… inspiration for their works to be sourced from the moon’s movements in relation to the planets. Not every mother’s cheer-up remedy, but for Harriet, who Ginny perceives as “a mother so lacking in depth, so pretentious and arty”; it is the best she can devise.
Ginny agrees to the exhibition but as far as she is concerned she is: “in her mother’s house because she had nowhere else to go, here to reassess her life, here to make sense of her recent past, a past that catapulted her back on the search for answers, for revelations, for anything that would help her understand why she didn’t have a father.”
As Ginny pushes her mother to open up about her father, Harriet remains “too tight-lipped”, turning Ginny’s quest to understand the past into “a real present tense endeavour”.
Harriet, while wanting to protect her daughter, is not thrilled to have her back home, miserable and pushing for answers about her father. At the crux of it, Harriet fears that her daughter’s mood will “thwart her creativity”.
As mother and daughter are locked in each other’s orbit, like the moon and the planets that they are seeking inspiration from, their relationship waxes and wanes, and there are ups and downs, light and shade.
They approach their art as differently as they approach life, but in their own way they unlock their creativity. As the exhibition is finally pulled together, much more is unlocked and released.
Interspersed between mother and daughter tensions, is the unravelling of the story of Judith and her wayward daughter Madeleine.
Madeleine is also eager to seek out a relationship with her estranged father… but unlike the protective Harriet, Judith encourages contact.
What finally is produced, through the author’s cleverly paced revelations, is a dark, unsettling picture – the last dabs of paint are applied and the reader is left to watch in horror as the intertwined stories resolve.
The reader is no longer looking at crescents but a full moon, bright and harsh in its full circle. But light brings a new start too, after the dark.
There is so much to this layered novel. It is every bit a thriller – holding the reader, serving up pages of simmering suspense and startling secrets.
The author’s writing style is poetic, complex, fresh. Descriptions are purposeful and suggest much about the characters. For instance, Ginny’s obsession with paisley clothes, is her clutching to her childhood.
There is a strong sense of the feminine throughout – beyond the female characters and their strong female friendships, the reader can’t help but feel the over-riding feminine power of creativity, caves and cycles.
If looking for an intriguing, well-crafted story that at the end will have you biting your nails… then pick up A Perfect Square and immerse yourself in it. I strongly recommend it.
February 6, 2017
A mother and daughter in Australia and a mother and daughter in England. What do they have in common apart from the fact that both the daughters have broken up with their respective boyfriends and have come home? There are walls between the mothers and their daughters, especially between Ginny and her mother Harriet who feel depressed by each others’ company. Somehow they are unable to leave the past behind and to cross the bridge towards the other. What if they start an artistic project together, Harriet paints pictures and Ginny composes and plays piano music. Perhaps working on their project will bring them closer.
There are two mothers, one in England and one in Australia, both single parents with daughters who are troubled by a previous relationship and have come home. The mothers are both painters and love their seclusion, now abruptly broken by the homecoming of their daughters. What can they do but open their homes and let them in to stay? Even if the relationship between Judith and her daughter as well as the mother-daughter relationship between Harriet and Ginny is under a lot of strain, their daughters need a place to heal. There is resentment from the daughters but we do not fully comprehend the depth of it until much later in the novel. Both Judith and Harriet are struggling with their artistic capacities and somehow feel they are lacking something and are unable to find their true source of inspiration.
Meet 28-year-old Ginny, who has nowhere else to go but home. Temporarily, she thinks but is not sure as her whole life feels upside down. It is depressing to move back into your childhood rooms but what can you do when your boyfriend has successfully isolated you from almost all of your friends and stopped your academic career? Plus, Ginny simply has no idea what to do with her life. She loved playing the piano, could have had a promising career but that was also blocked by her boyfriend. No wonder mother Harriet is glad the boyfriend is out of the picture, but she is not sure whether to be pleased for her daughter to come home because of her presence seems to ‘loom’ in the house. Somehow Ginny disrupts Harriet’s life and artistic flow, making her question everything she believes in.
Harriet is inspired by the ancient astrologers, by the circle of the moon and her zodiac horoscope. She is imaginative up to being synaesthetic towards experiencing arts and thus is perceptive in seeing signs in all she encounters. Harriet firmly believes she is the product of what was laid out for her at her birth and that her life path has followed accordingly. Her artistic inspiration mainly comes from the 1920s with Kandinsky as one of her favourites. She has painted an homage to Kandinsky when she was in her mid-twenties and this very painting is hanging over the pianola – Ginny’s preferred instrument. Now Ginny is challenging her beliefs in a circular Zodiac divided into twelve segments to form the perfect circle and questioning what lies at the very base of Harriet’s opinions.
Harriet knows Ginny is defying her but at the same time the roots of doubt are unsettling and unnerving her. She has no idea how to react and dares not even think about what it could mean because she feels it is upsetting her carefully fabricated life wherein her actions are determined by the influences of the planets on her birth sign. Is it a compromise that mother and daughter decide to start a project together? Harriet thinks it will help Ginny to get over her boyfriend and move forward. Ginny acquiesces because she feels she has no other choice and nothing better to do. Some paintings to go with the same number of piano pieces – that is what they aim at. The circles of the Moon they will base their artistic project on. Mother and daughter have endless arguments about the number of compositions before deciding on nine.
Nine Moon months – nine paintings – nine musical pieces. Ginny finds her inspiration for the music pretty soon but Harriet is in doubt. She is facing an existential crisis: her past is overshadowing the present and with that comes a feeling of never having been good enough. Harriet realises she has not produced one single original painting in years. Add that to Ginny’s resentment towards her mother and is it a wonder that Harriet is unable to find inspiration for her paintings? Op top of that Ginny, who feels her mother has abducted her, bears a grudge against her mother because of having been deprived of a father for all those years. Harriet refuses to talk about her father other than saying that he was a bad person who doted on his daughter. A loving father cannot be as evil as Harriet describes him to be in Ginny’s opinion.
The theme of this psychological novel is the complex relationship between mothers and daughters but also lifelong female friendships. There are two mothers, one in England and one in Australia with daughters who are troubled by a previous relationship and who have come home to heal. The mothers are both painters and somehow at a stage in their career, where they lack the inspiration and creativity to move forward. The daughters are like any young women of their age: they are rebelling against their mothers who raised them as single parents. Both Harriet and Ginny have carefully fabricated the world they live in upon the beliefs they perceive as truth. Harriet has her astrology and worship for 1920s painters such as Kandinsky, Ginny her firm belief that growing up without her father deprived her of a part of herself: her comfortable paisley clothes are her safeguard and protection.
Where the story is about Ginny and Harriet it is interesting and insightful, for me, the added wide-ranging themes are a bit too much and overshadow the mother-daughter relationship which in itself is dramatic, especially since you only really grasp what is going on at the end of the novel. I wanted to shake Harriet for speaking about Ginny’s father the way she does while at the same time refusing to say anything more: no wonder Ginny, being the susceptible young woman she is, is intrigued. As for Ginny, she has created a world based on a fairy tale and at 28 you should think that she needs to realise the world outside is nothing like her fantasy. In my opinion, both mother and daughter needed to grow up. Whether they did is something for you to decide after reading this novel!
Read the review on my website: https://www.bitsaboutbooks.net/a-perf...
There are two mothers, one in England and one in Australia, both single parents with daughters who are troubled by a previous relationship and have come home. The mothers are both painters and love their seclusion, now abruptly broken by the homecoming of their daughters. What can they do but open their homes and let them in to stay? Even if the relationship between Judith and her daughter as well as the mother-daughter relationship between Harriet and Ginny is under a lot of strain, their daughters need a place to heal. There is resentment from the daughters but we do not fully comprehend the depth of it until much later in the novel. Both Judith and Harriet are struggling with their artistic capacities and somehow feel they are lacking something and are unable to find their true source of inspiration.
Meet 28-year-old Ginny, who has nowhere else to go but home. Temporarily, she thinks but is not sure as her whole life feels upside down. It is depressing to move back into your childhood rooms but what can you do when your boyfriend has successfully isolated you from almost all of your friends and stopped your academic career? Plus, Ginny simply has no idea what to do with her life. She loved playing the piano, could have had a promising career but that was also blocked by her boyfriend. No wonder mother Harriet is glad the boyfriend is out of the picture, but she is not sure whether to be pleased for her daughter to come home because of her presence seems to ‘loom’ in the house. Somehow Ginny disrupts Harriet’s life and artistic flow, making her question everything she believes in.
Harriet is inspired by the ancient astrologers, by the circle of the moon and her zodiac horoscope. She is imaginative up to being synaesthetic towards experiencing arts and thus is perceptive in seeing signs in all she encounters. Harriet firmly believes she is the product of what was laid out for her at her birth and that her life path has followed accordingly. Her artistic inspiration mainly comes from the 1920s with Kandinsky as one of her favourites. She has painted an homage to Kandinsky when she was in her mid-twenties and this very painting is hanging over the pianola – Ginny’s preferred instrument. Now Ginny is challenging her beliefs in a circular Zodiac divided into twelve segments to form the perfect circle and questioning what lies at the very base of Harriet’s opinions.
Harriet knows Ginny is defying her but at the same time the roots of doubt are unsettling and unnerving her. She has no idea how to react and dares not even think about what it could mean because she feels it is upsetting her carefully fabricated life wherein her actions are determined by the influences of the planets on her birth sign. Is it a compromise that mother and daughter decide to start a project together? Harriet thinks it will help Ginny to get over her boyfriend and move forward. Ginny acquiesces because she feels she has no other choice and nothing better to do. Some paintings to go with the same number of piano pieces – that is what they aim at. The circles of the Moon they will base their artistic project on. Mother and daughter have endless arguments about the number of compositions before deciding on nine.
Nine Moon months – nine paintings – nine musical pieces. Ginny finds her inspiration for the music pretty soon but Harriet is in doubt. She is facing an existential crisis: her past is overshadowing the present and with that comes a feeling of never having been good enough. Harriet realises she has not produced one single original painting in years. Add that to Ginny’s resentment towards her mother and is it a wonder that Harriet is unable to find inspiration for her paintings? Op top of that Ginny, who feels her mother has abducted her, bears a grudge against her mother because of having been deprived of a father for all those years. Harriet refuses to talk about her father other than saying that he was a bad person who doted on his daughter. A loving father cannot be as evil as Harriet describes him to be in Ginny’s opinion.
The theme of this psychological novel is the complex relationship between mothers and daughters but also lifelong female friendships. There are two mothers, one in England and one in Australia with daughters who are troubled by a previous relationship and who have come home to heal. The mothers are both painters and somehow at a stage in their career, where they lack the inspiration and creativity to move forward. The daughters are like any young women of their age: they are rebelling against their mothers who raised them as single parents. Both Harriet and Ginny have carefully fabricated the world they live in upon the beliefs they perceive as truth. Harriet has her astrology and worship for 1920s painters such as Kandinsky, Ginny her firm belief that growing up without her father deprived her of a part of herself: her comfortable paisley clothes are her safeguard and protection.
Where the story is about Ginny and Harriet it is interesting and insightful, for me, the added wide-ranging themes are a bit too much and overshadow the mother-daughter relationship which in itself is dramatic, especially since you only really grasp what is going on at the end of the novel. I wanted to shake Harriet for speaking about Ginny’s father the way she does while at the same time refusing to say anything more: no wonder Ginny, being the susceptible young woman she is, is intrigued. As for Ginny, she has created a world based on a fairy tale and at 28 you should think that she needs to realise the world outside is nothing like her fantasy. In my opinion, both mother and daughter needed to grow up. Whether they did is something for you to decide after reading this novel!
Read the review on my website: https://www.bitsaboutbooks.net/a-perf...
January 1, 2018
Some books haunt you. You rarely know this will happen when you are reading them - the sensation creeps up on you after the last page. With A Perfect Square there was a moment as I read where my heart dropped and I knew this book would stay with me. It is the story of two mother-daughter relationships, one in Australia and one in England. The parallels and connections are unveiled slowly, like a spider's web slowly but artfully woven. Blackthorn uses words beautifully to create settings and lives so real that I felt I was in the room, a silent and at times uncomfortable observer.
Harriet is a menopausal artist whose daughter, Ginny, returns home after a relationship breakup. Her decision to challenge Ginny to co-create an exhibition of art and music in order to shake her out of her depression has unforseen consequences for both of them. At the same time Ginny's quest to find her father unlocks secrets that might have been better left in the shadows. On the other side of the world, Judith struggles with her relationship with her daughter Madeleine, as she faces her own creative demons.
On another level A Perfect Square is an exploration of the truth and meaning of art and the nature of creativity. Blackthorn is an exceptionally skillful writer, not only at the technical level (characterisation, description, structure and so on) but at the thematic level. As she writes about the power of art, she evokes a range of emotional responses in the reader. The beautiful language in the book inspired me to create, while at one point I felt heart pounding anxiety and at the end, when I realised how few pages were left, I felt bereft because I didn't want to leave the characters whose lives I had become absorbed in. The descriptions of art and the creative process are a reminder that there is much more below the surface than we often notice.
I don't keep many books any more because I've run out of shelf space, but this is one that I will keep and return to. A marvellous work.
Harriet is a menopausal artist whose daughter, Ginny, returns home after a relationship breakup. Her decision to challenge Ginny to co-create an exhibition of art and music in order to shake her out of her depression has unforseen consequences for both of them. At the same time Ginny's quest to find her father unlocks secrets that might have been better left in the shadows. On the other side of the world, Judith struggles with her relationship with her daughter Madeleine, as she faces her own creative demons.
On another level A Perfect Square is an exploration of the truth and meaning of art and the nature of creativity. Blackthorn is an exceptionally skillful writer, not only at the technical level (characterisation, description, structure and so on) but at the thematic level. As she writes about the power of art, she evokes a range of emotional responses in the reader. The beautiful language in the book inspired me to create, while at one point I felt heart pounding anxiety and at the end, when I realised how few pages were left, I felt bereft because I didn't want to leave the characters whose lives I had become absorbed in. The descriptions of art and the creative process are a reminder that there is much more below the surface than we often notice.
I don't keep many books any more because I've run out of shelf space, but this is one that I will keep and return to. A marvellous work.
July 9, 2019
A Perfect Square by Isobel Blackthorn
About forty five minutes by car to the east of Melbourne brings you to the Dandenongs. A small mountain range strewn with a magical semi-tropical rainforest, full of tall mountain ash, giant tree ferns and crystal trickling creeks. Mast Gully was so named by an old sailing captain, in the days of the first settlers, who said the tall straight trees reminded him of nothing so much as a forest of ships masts. The area has attracted artists and musicians since its very earliest days, the painter Tom Roberts used to live and paint here, and William Ricketts of the famous sanctuary in Olinda, used to be a jazz clarinettist. A bustling, vibrant, everchanging colony of artistic types has inhabited the hills, gullies and quaint little towns ever since.
It is in this idyllic setting that Isobel Blackthorn has placed 'A Perfect Square'. At the heart of this delightful tale is an artistic collaboration between Harriet, a somewhat neurotic painter with a hidden past, and her daughter Ginny, a musician with deep questions about her absent father. At the same time far across the sea on the moors of Dorset, England, another mother daughter relationship is being played out by Judith and her daughter Madeleine. Judith too, is a painter, also wrestling with her work and her past and her relationships. The two stories play as counterpoint to each other, as the story ducks and weaves around Astrology, Art history, music, occultism and the power of a past, not fully come to terms with, to invade and choke the present. As the two girls become unhappier, winter approaches, the gallery presentation comes nearer, and the story itself begins to become darker before finally resolving in very surprising ways.
There is more than a touch of 'AbFab' about the relationships between some of the characters, and as someone with more than a passing acquaintanceship with the Dandenongs, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed spending time with them all. I have known these people, gone to their homes and eaten their food and drunk their wine, far into the evening. Musicians and practitioners of the static Arts will find much to interest them in this story as both subjects are not merely touched upon but form an integral part of the structure of this tale.
In a case of ‘life imitating Art’ or ‘Art imitating life’, the authors own daughter has contributed musical works that echo the collaboration in the story, and these are also available to the reader through weblinks at the back of the book?
I was somewhat hesitant approaching ‘A Perfect Square’ as something seemed to be saying that it might have been a little too serious for my mood. I could not have been more wrong. I heartily recommend this to anyone who likes fascinating and believable characters, well drawn settings and just enough mystery to keep the whole thing bubbling along nicely. The sort of book you almost want to start reading again, the moment you have finished it, and I have to confess, I enjoyed it immensely…
Philip A. Wallis.
About forty five minutes by car to the east of Melbourne brings you to the Dandenongs. A small mountain range strewn with a magical semi-tropical rainforest, full of tall mountain ash, giant tree ferns and crystal trickling creeks. Mast Gully was so named by an old sailing captain, in the days of the first settlers, who said the tall straight trees reminded him of nothing so much as a forest of ships masts. The area has attracted artists and musicians since its very earliest days, the painter Tom Roberts used to live and paint here, and William Ricketts of the famous sanctuary in Olinda, used to be a jazz clarinettist. A bustling, vibrant, everchanging colony of artistic types has inhabited the hills, gullies and quaint little towns ever since.
It is in this idyllic setting that Isobel Blackthorn has placed 'A Perfect Square'. At the heart of this delightful tale is an artistic collaboration between Harriet, a somewhat neurotic painter with a hidden past, and her daughter Ginny, a musician with deep questions about her absent father. At the same time far across the sea on the moors of Dorset, England, another mother daughter relationship is being played out by Judith and her daughter Madeleine. Judith too, is a painter, also wrestling with her work and her past and her relationships. The two stories play as counterpoint to each other, as the story ducks and weaves around Astrology, Art history, music, occultism and the power of a past, not fully come to terms with, to invade and choke the present. As the two girls become unhappier, winter approaches, the gallery presentation comes nearer, and the story itself begins to become darker before finally resolving in very surprising ways.
There is more than a touch of 'AbFab' about the relationships between some of the characters, and as someone with more than a passing acquaintanceship with the Dandenongs, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed spending time with them all. I have known these people, gone to their homes and eaten their food and drunk their wine, far into the evening. Musicians and practitioners of the static Arts will find much to interest them in this story as both subjects are not merely touched upon but form an integral part of the structure of this tale.
In a case of ‘life imitating Art’ or ‘Art imitating life’, the authors own daughter has contributed musical works that echo the collaboration in the story, and these are also available to the reader through weblinks at the back of the book?
I was somewhat hesitant approaching ‘A Perfect Square’ as something seemed to be saying that it might have been a little too serious for my mood. I could not have been more wrong. I heartily recommend this to anyone who likes fascinating and believable characters, well drawn settings and just enough mystery to keep the whole thing bubbling along nicely. The sort of book you almost want to start reading again, the moment you have finished it, and I have to confess, I enjoyed it immensely…
Philip A. Wallis.
September 9, 2016
Two women on either side of the world live almost parallel lives. Both artists with a preference for seclusion, Harriet in the Dandenong Ranges paints abstract scenes of Wessex and Judith in Dartmoor paints and yearns for the Australian landscape she has never seen. Both have daughters, returned home. Both are not sure what to do with their difficult and slightly broken daughters.
A Perfect Square is Isobel Blackthorn's third novel. The layers within this book stem from her interest in the Western esotericism and conspiracy theories. It is one of those books you read the first time for the story, and then go back to for the second layer, the glittering bits that lift the story.
Harriet has Synaesthesia - she sees colours in music and considers this an inner knowing which she struggles to portray in her art. Ginny, her musically talented daughter in her paisley clothes reminds Harriet of the "accursed seventies when the hippies took hold of the occult and turned it into fairy floss". When Ginny returns home moping and determined to find out where her father is, Harriet proposes a collaboration of music and art.
Meanwhile, Judith's daughter Madeline drops out of college, leaves her boyfriend and returns home. Judith is torn between worrying about her daughter and being absorbed in her painting and wanting her house back to herself.
These two fractious mother daughter relationships are pulled together by threads of what could be seen as coincidence. But with the occult themes of this book nothing can be dismissed as coincidence. There is a darkness that connects the two families.
This book is beautifully written. Intelligent and complicated it deserves a deep read. I particularly enjoyed reading about the characters' struggle to create. To paint or compose music is a process of inspiration, contemplation, and doubt. Sometimes the vision is realised, but often it is not.
In our lives we often dismiss the conspiracy theorist, perhaps we are willing to accept the importance of our dreams, and maybe we dabble in reading our horoscope. A Perfect Square may leave you questioning what goes on behind closed doors in what seems like the most ordinary of situations.
A Perfect Square is published by Odyssey Books. I received a free copy in return for an honest review.
A Perfect Square is Isobel Blackthorn's third novel. The layers within this book stem from her interest in the Western esotericism and conspiracy theories. It is one of those books you read the first time for the story, and then go back to for the second layer, the glittering bits that lift the story.
Harriet has Synaesthesia - she sees colours in music and considers this an inner knowing which she struggles to portray in her art. Ginny, her musically talented daughter in her paisley clothes reminds Harriet of the "accursed seventies when the hippies took hold of the occult and turned it into fairy floss". When Ginny returns home moping and determined to find out where her father is, Harriet proposes a collaboration of music and art.
Meanwhile, Judith's daughter Madeline drops out of college, leaves her boyfriend and returns home. Judith is torn between worrying about her daughter and being absorbed in her painting and wanting her house back to herself.
These two fractious mother daughter relationships are pulled together by threads of what could be seen as coincidence. But with the occult themes of this book nothing can be dismissed as coincidence. There is a darkness that connects the two families.
This book is beautifully written. Intelligent and complicated it deserves a deep read. I particularly enjoyed reading about the characters' struggle to create. To paint or compose music is a process of inspiration, contemplation, and doubt. Sometimes the vision is realised, but often it is not.
In our lives we often dismiss the conspiracy theorist, perhaps we are willing to accept the importance of our dreams, and maybe we dabble in reading our horoscope. A Perfect Square may leave you questioning what goes on behind closed doors in what seems like the most ordinary of situations.
A Perfect Square is published by Odyssey Books. I received a free copy in return for an honest review.
May 23, 2016
"The Seventies, that accursed decade when the hippies took hold of the occult and turned it into fairy floss."
That line tickled me! "They were three difficult years. Harriet called it her Persephone period and she broke away from abstract art and produced a series of moody landscapes in pen and ink..." Isobel Blackthorn is a clever author, I very much enjoyed her biting wit. There is almost a dreamlike quality here, with a synaesthetic mother (whose outlet is her art) having the grand idea to collaborate with her pianist daughter. But there are problems between them, and with her bum of a boyfriend costing her a job Ginny must move back in with her mother. Bad love chases her friends and future away but there may be hope yet. Harriet is attuned to happenstance and all things esoteric, in their collaboration even something as simple as the number of paintings can set off unease in her gut. Harriet also fears her daughter's true reason for returning is to "taunt her mother with the past". After-all, Ginny wants to know where her daddy is as much now as she did when she was just a 7 yr old little girl. Symbolism through dreams, artistic vision and a father that cannot be talked about because maybe he is a shadow himself, all of this makes for one strangely unique story. Some mysteries are better left unsolved, some skeletons better left dancing in your closet but maybe Ginny can't help her obsession with needing her father.
How are Judith and Madeline's stories intertwined with theirs? What does Madeline have to do with Ginny's father? Maybe Harriet's silence about her father all these years will finally make terrible sense. This is a mystically strange tale.
That line tickled me! "They were three difficult years. Harriet called it her Persephone period and she broke away from abstract art and produced a series of moody landscapes in pen and ink..." Isobel Blackthorn is a clever author, I very much enjoyed her biting wit. There is almost a dreamlike quality here, with a synaesthetic mother (whose outlet is her art) having the grand idea to collaborate with her pianist daughter. But there are problems between them, and with her bum of a boyfriend costing her a job Ginny must move back in with her mother. Bad love chases her friends and future away but there may be hope yet. Harriet is attuned to happenstance and all things esoteric, in their collaboration even something as simple as the number of paintings can set off unease in her gut. Harriet also fears her daughter's true reason for returning is to "taunt her mother with the past". After-all, Ginny wants to know where her daddy is as much now as she did when she was just a 7 yr old little girl. Symbolism through dreams, artistic vision and a father that cannot be talked about because maybe he is a shadow himself, all of this makes for one strangely unique story. Some mysteries are better left unsolved, some skeletons better left dancing in your closet but maybe Ginny can't help her obsession with needing her father.
How are Judith and Madeline's stories intertwined with theirs? What does Madeline have to do with Ginny's father? Maybe Harriet's silence about her father all these years will finally make terrible sense. This is a mystically strange tale.
January 19, 2017
A Perfect Square is a clever, thoughtful literary novel which also manages to have a cracking plot and complex characters.
This is a book that grew and grew on me. I'll admit to a false start the first time I picked it up. I felt there was a lot of moving around in the characters' heads to the recent past, the far past and then back to the present. But when I sat down with a proper amount of time to dig into the story it was an absolute pleasure. Blackthorn has a great plot and lots of writing talent. Her descriptions are wonderful - both of people and places - and there was lots of fabulous language to enjoy. I loved the two parallel mother/daughter stories and was impressed by the way they intersected. It was also great to read so much about the creative process and to consider the challenges of creativity and motherhood.
I will certainly look to read Blackthorn's other work. The Perfect Square is a clever, thoughtful literary novel which still manages to have a cracking plot and complex characters. It should appeal to lovers of psychological thrillers too - think artistic Gone Girl.
This is a book that grew and grew on me. I'll admit to a false start the first time I picked it up. I felt there was a lot of moving around in the characters' heads to the recent past, the far past and then back to the present. But when I sat down with a proper amount of time to dig into the story it was an absolute pleasure. Blackthorn has a great plot and lots of writing talent. Her descriptions are wonderful - both of people and places - and there was lots of fabulous language to enjoy. I loved the two parallel mother/daughter stories and was impressed by the way they intersected. It was also great to read so much about the creative process and to consider the challenges of creativity and motherhood.
I will certainly look to read Blackthorn's other work. The Perfect Square is a clever, thoughtful literary novel which still manages to have a cracking plot and complex characters. It should appeal to lovers of psychological thrillers too - think artistic Gone Girl.
July 5, 2016
At first this appears to be two parallel stories of mothers who are artists and their wayward daughters who have moved back home after relationship failure. Both daughters want to know more about their absentee father who is an enigmatic figure hovering over their lives and affecting their sense of self. Both mothers find their daughters difficult and the mother/daughter relationship is illuminated from both points of view as the book unfolds. Blackthorn's writing is very good but the plotting in this novel needs work. The relationship between Harriet and Ginny seemed to be more fully realised than that between Judith and Madeleine. Harriet and Ginny live in Melbourne (or just out of it) while Judith and Madeleine live in Bournemouth England. The way the two relationships come together is very nicely done but the role of the father is underdeveloped. The way Ginny comes to terms with her search for her father is just not credible given that a life long obsession is 'solved' in one sentence! I enjoyed the book despite some of its problems.
May 30, 2016
I wanted to be consumed by this book. Unfortunately, I was not. I read it over several weeks, reading other things along the way. I found the author's style to be overly wordy, mainly, overly descriptive. In the end, I felt that I knew more about the characters' surroundings and clothing than I did about their thoughts and feelings.. The stories deal with two mothers and their daughters, both artists, and both having to open their home to their offspring who are fleeing bad relationships. They live in different countries with no knowledge of one another. Both daughters search for an estranged and elusive father.
This plot line holds the promise for a wonderful story but the promise is unfulfilled. My advice to the author would be to develop your plot rather than drowning your readers with unnecessary description.
I think I would try another book by this author as I think she will improve with time.
This plot line holds the promise for a wonderful story but the promise is unfulfilled. My advice to the author would be to develop your plot rather than drowning your readers with unnecessary description.
I think I would try another book by this author as I think she will improve with time.
October 7, 2016
A Perfect Square combines two mother-daughter stories into one book. Are their similarities? Yes, but not as many as you might think. Both mothers are artists and accustomed to living alone when the daughters decide it’s time to move back home due to the ending of relationships. There ends the similarities.
My favorite storyline was that of mother Judith and the young somewhat rebellious daughter Madeleine. The Judith/Madeleine story flowed well in the alternating structure the author chose. One chapter you have Judith and Madeleine, the next is Ginny and talented pianist daughter Harriet.
The two stories are linked by a mystery that is revealed in the final chapters. It was a surprise to me, although I think I should have realized if I had only known to look for it. The Ginny/Harriet story is obviously well researched from the various subjects discussed and how the author weaves them together to unite mother and daughter.
My favorite storyline was that of mother Judith and the young somewhat rebellious daughter Madeleine. The Judith/Madeleine story flowed well in the alternating structure the author chose. One chapter you have Judith and Madeleine, the next is Ginny and talented pianist daughter Harriet.
The two stories are linked by a mystery that is revealed in the final chapters. It was a surprise to me, although I think I should have realized if I had only known to look for it. The Ginny/Harriet story is obviously well researched from the various subjects discussed and how the author weaves them together to unite mother and daughter.
August 26, 2016
Back in May I started trying to read A Perfect Square by Isobel Blackthorn, but I was at the beach and it is most definitely not a beach read and so I postponed reading until I was in more suitable environs.
A Perfect Square is a novel about Harriet, an artist, and her daughter, Ginny, a pianist/composer is who returning home after a failed love affair. In the hopes of re-energizing her daughter, Harriet suggests that they do an exhibition of painting and song.
read more: https://saschadarlington.wordpress.co...
A Perfect Square is a novel about Harriet, an artist, and her daughter, Ginny, a pianist/composer is who returning home after a failed love affair. In the hopes of re-energizing her daughter, Harriet suggests that they do an exhibition of painting and song.
read more: https://saschadarlington.wordpress.co...
August 9, 2016
loved it - review coming up
August 17, 2021
This is an intriguing novel. Harriet is an artist in Australia with a resentful daughter the blames her for separating her from her father. Judith is an artist in England with another resentful daughter. Neither mother has been quite truthful. How the two far distant lives will intertwine will keep you turning the pages. Yet, this story is more than that. The art that it covers draws you in also.
June 5, 2016
There's a better book in here- I think Blackthorn was not well served by her editor. The characters are interesting but the whole thing was overwhelmed bu writing which needed some tightening. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.
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