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Believe In Me
An unforgettable and profound novel about three generations of one family and the healing power of understanding where you've come from.
As a teenager in the 1970s, Sarah is forced to leave her home in upstate New York to accompany a missionary to Idaho. When she falls pregnant, she is despatched to relatives in Sydney, who place her in a home for unmarried mothers. Years later her daughter, Bet, pieces together her mother's life story, hoping to understand her better. As she learns more about Sarah's past, Bet struggles to come to terms with her own history and identity, yet is determined to make peace with Sarah's choices before it's too late.
Lucy Neave's moving and deeply personal second novel, Believe in Me, explores the relationships between mothers and their children across three generations of one family. The book questions what we can ever truly know of our parents' early lives, even as their experiences weave ineffably into our identities and destinies.
As a teenager in the 1970s, Sarah is forced to leave her home in upstate New York to accompany a missionary to Idaho. When she falls pregnant, she is despatched to relatives in Sydney, who place her in a home for unmarried mothers. Years later her daughter, Bet, pieces together her mother's life story, hoping to understand her better. As she learns more about Sarah's past, Bet struggles to come to terms with her own history and identity, yet is determined to make peace with Sarah's choices before it's too late.
Lucy Neave's moving and deeply personal second novel, Believe in Me, explores the relationships between mothers and their children across three generations of one family. The book questions what we can ever truly know of our parents' early lives, even as their experiences weave ineffably into our identities and destinies.
- GenresBook Club
308 pages, Paperback
Published August 31, 2021
2 people are currently reading
153 people want to read
About the author
Lucy Neave
5 books8 followersLucy Neave completed a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing in the US on a Fulbright scholarship, and has received a Varuna New Writers’ Fellowship, an Australian Society of Authors Mentorship and an Australia Council grant. Her fiction has appeared in Australian and American literary journals, including Overland, Lost Magazine and Antipodes and in Best Australian Stories 2009. Her second novel, Believe in Me was published in 2021 by UQP. It was highly commended for the 2022 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction. She teaches Creative Writing at the Australian National University.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
August 27, 2021
“I felt a desire to turn the pages of Sarah’s scrapbooks; they were still in my wardrobe, far away. Even though she was gone, she’d lived this whole life, rich in feeling and pain. None of it had been her fault: it had simply happened. I wondered what kind of sense I could make from those pages stiff with glue, from her pencil markings, from all that had happened, her long journey.”
Believe In Me is the second novel by Australian author, Lucy Neave. After an unconventional childhood, certain events lead Bet, at thirty, to try to reconstruct her mother’s life, to inhabit her thoughts, to feel what she did and make sense of it.
The story begins in mid-1974 in Poughkeepsie. Eighteen-year-old Sarah Francis takes leave of her devout but illiterate mother and her artistic younger brother, boarding a train to Idaho with their pastor, Isaiah Woolcott, three days before her daughter is conceived. She assists the pastor in God’s work as a missionary to a reluctant Indian population, wishing only to return her mother.
Her pregnancy brings ostracism: she is sent to an uncle in Sydney, and put in a home for unmarried mothers. Despite her naivete, Sarah is determined to keep her child. A militantly feminist mid-wife, a bus trip to Adelaide and work as a live-in housekeeper never dampen her resolve to return home, now with her daughter, Bethany.
But Isaiah is only the first in a line of men who take advantage of their position, or try to. Independence is difficult to achieve with a baby to care for: “Love for a child is something you carry, a weight in your chest. It curves your back and makes you walk as though you live on Jupiter, the gravity making you heavier: all the responsibility” and, dependant on the kindness of strangers, her goal of going home seems even more difficult to attain.
Sarah’s apparent acquiescence may puzzle today’s woman, but her mother, Greta’s mantra: “Accept whatever comes from above, because it’s all from God” seems to guide her strange choices. Bet is surprised at some of Sarah’s surreptitious acts of defiance.
Neave has Bet telling Sarah’s story through a first-person narrative that is sometimes from Sarah’s perspective, and sometimes from her own, and remembering this will avoid occasional confusion with personal pronouns. Her descriptive prose is often exquisite, and she easily evokes strong emotions and feelings from the reader with what these women experience and endure. This is a powerful, compelling read.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by University of Queensland Press.
Believe In Me is the second novel by Australian author, Lucy Neave. After an unconventional childhood, certain events lead Bet, at thirty, to try to reconstruct her mother’s life, to inhabit her thoughts, to feel what she did and make sense of it.
The story begins in mid-1974 in Poughkeepsie. Eighteen-year-old Sarah Francis takes leave of her devout but illiterate mother and her artistic younger brother, boarding a train to Idaho with their pastor, Isaiah Woolcott, three days before her daughter is conceived. She assists the pastor in God’s work as a missionary to a reluctant Indian population, wishing only to return her mother.
Her pregnancy brings ostracism: she is sent to an uncle in Sydney, and put in a home for unmarried mothers. Despite her naivete, Sarah is determined to keep her child. A militantly feminist mid-wife, a bus trip to Adelaide and work as a live-in housekeeper never dampen her resolve to return home, now with her daughter, Bethany.
But Isaiah is only the first in a line of men who take advantage of their position, or try to. Independence is difficult to achieve with a baby to care for: “Love for a child is something you carry, a weight in your chest. It curves your back and makes you walk as though you live on Jupiter, the gravity making you heavier: all the responsibility” and, dependant on the kindness of strangers, her goal of going home seems even more difficult to attain.
Sarah’s apparent acquiescence may puzzle today’s woman, but her mother, Greta’s mantra: “Accept whatever comes from above, because it’s all from God” seems to guide her strange choices. Bet is surprised at some of Sarah’s surreptitious acts of defiance.
Neave has Bet telling Sarah’s story through a first-person narrative that is sometimes from Sarah’s perspective, and sometimes from her own, and remembering this will avoid occasional confusion with personal pronouns. Her descriptive prose is often exquisite, and she easily evokes strong emotions and feelings from the reader with what these women experience and endure. This is a powerful, compelling read.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by University of Queensland Press.
December 26, 2021
‘You’re right that I haven’t told you everything.’
In 2004 Bethany (Bet) embarks on a journey to find out who she is, by trying to find out more about her mother Sarah.
‘I would like to write down the portions of my mother’s story that I know, but I’m not sure exactly what happened to her in the year before I was born.’
Bet sees the story of her mother as starting in 1974, the year before Bet was born. I was drawn into the story, of Bet trying to look back on her mother’s life to try to better understand herself and her own place in the world.
As a teenager in the 1970s, Sarah Francis is sent from her home in upstate New York to accompany Pastor Isaiah Woolcott on a mission to Idaho. Sarah leaves behind her mother Greta and brother Levi.
‘Three days before I am conceived, Sarah packs her suitcase.’
When Sarah becomes pregnant, her mother sends her from Poughkeepsie in New York State to family in Sydney. My heart breaks: Greta is more concerned with the Pastor’s reputation than with Sarah’s wellbeing. And when Sarah arrives in Sydney, she is not staying with her Aunt Nadine and Uncle John: she’s delivered to a home where unmarried mothers live (and work) until their babies are born. No one intends for Sarah to keep her baby: perhaps her Aunt Nadine might take the baby. Thus far, Sarah has been given no say in the arrangements made for her. But her passivity ends (temporarily at least) after her baby is born. With the help of Dora, who quickly becomes a friend, Sarah takes Bethany.
Imagine. A young woman, cut-off from all family trying to establish a life for herself. Sarah’s life so far has not prepared her for this. Sarah wants to return to her mother in New York State, but she has no money for the airfares. Bethany grows up as an only child with no links to family and no clear history. Sarah alternates between passive acceptance of her situation, relying heavily on her friend Dora, being manipulated by others, and being quite manipulative herself. Her friend Dora is one constant in both Sarah’s and Bet’s lives.
Bet is encouraged to work hard at school, and she does. Bet becomes a qualified vet, but she is restless and chooses to work as a locum rather than settle into one practice. Sarah’s unsettledness is also part of Bet’s life: both want security but neither know how to find and embrace it.
This novel took me on an uncomfortable journey, a reminder that parents had lives before children, a reminder that parents and children shape each other’s lives and a reminder that we can never really know another person completely. Bet has Sarah’s scrapbooks, but it is not always possible to understand the significance of the mementos that others keep.
A beautifully written novel that has me wondering about family and identity.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
In 2004 Bethany (Bet) embarks on a journey to find out who she is, by trying to find out more about her mother Sarah.
‘I would like to write down the portions of my mother’s story that I know, but I’m not sure exactly what happened to her in the year before I was born.’
Bet sees the story of her mother as starting in 1974, the year before Bet was born. I was drawn into the story, of Bet trying to look back on her mother’s life to try to better understand herself and her own place in the world.
As a teenager in the 1970s, Sarah Francis is sent from her home in upstate New York to accompany Pastor Isaiah Woolcott on a mission to Idaho. Sarah leaves behind her mother Greta and brother Levi.
‘Three days before I am conceived, Sarah packs her suitcase.’
When Sarah becomes pregnant, her mother sends her from Poughkeepsie in New York State to family in Sydney. My heart breaks: Greta is more concerned with the Pastor’s reputation than with Sarah’s wellbeing. And when Sarah arrives in Sydney, she is not staying with her Aunt Nadine and Uncle John: she’s delivered to a home where unmarried mothers live (and work) until their babies are born. No one intends for Sarah to keep her baby: perhaps her Aunt Nadine might take the baby. Thus far, Sarah has been given no say in the arrangements made for her. But her passivity ends (temporarily at least) after her baby is born. With the help of Dora, who quickly becomes a friend, Sarah takes Bethany.
Imagine. A young woman, cut-off from all family trying to establish a life for herself. Sarah’s life so far has not prepared her for this. Sarah wants to return to her mother in New York State, but she has no money for the airfares. Bethany grows up as an only child with no links to family and no clear history. Sarah alternates between passive acceptance of her situation, relying heavily on her friend Dora, being manipulated by others, and being quite manipulative herself. Her friend Dora is one constant in both Sarah’s and Bet’s lives.
Bet is encouraged to work hard at school, and she does. Bet becomes a qualified vet, but she is restless and chooses to work as a locum rather than settle into one practice. Sarah’s unsettledness is also part of Bet’s life: both want security but neither know how to find and embrace it.
This novel took me on an uncomfortable journey, a reminder that parents had lives before children, a reminder that parents and children shape each other’s lives and a reminder that we can never really know another person completely. Bet has Sarah’s scrapbooks, but it is not always possible to understand the significance of the mementos that others keep.
A beautifully written novel that has me wondering about family and identity.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
September 15, 2021
What a delight this was to read! I honestly had no idea what to expect going into this novel and I’m so glad because it let me go in with my eyes completely open.
The story is told in through Bet as if she is retelling Sarah’s life. I personally loved this, it felt like Bet had wrapped me in a rug to tell me the story about a life. We learn that the man who fathered Bet will not be the last to take advantage of Sarah, who is struggling to find independence with her child in tow. How can she make her way back to New York City to a family that doesn’t want to accept her daughter?
BELIEVE IN ME in a tender and heartbreaking exploration about mothers and daughters. The prose of this novel is exquisite, it’s quiet and profound and I think one of the biggest takeaways of Neave’s writing here, is what does it mean to be a woman?
The story is told in through Bet as if she is retelling Sarah’s life. I personally loved this, it felt like Bet had wrapped me in a rug to tell me the story about a life. We learn that the man who fathered Bet will not be the last to take advantage of Sarah, who is struggling to find independence with her child in tow. How can she make her way back to New York City to a family that doesn’t want to accept her daughter?
BELIEVE IN ME in a tender and heartbreaking exploration about mothers and daughters. The prose of this novel is exquisite, it’s quiet and profound and I think one of the biggest takeaways of Neave’s writing here, is what does it mean to be a woman?
December 11, 2021
This is one of the strangest books I have read in recent years. There is some beautiful writing and some moving episodes. But the reader is constantly puzzled by the unreliability of the narrator when telling the story from either point of view - her own or her mother's - and by the constantly changing motivations of every character. Actually, most of the time, ascribing "motivation" is giving these characters too much credibility. They had underlying beliefs and wishes, but their behaviour was often random, unpredictable, meaningless and/or dangerous. Add to this a story-line that had the protagonists interact entirely with weak, manipulative and/or helpless characters, and this reader was constantly wondering 'what is happening?', 'why is she doing this?', 'could this really happen?'. I wish I could see what many others see in this book. I tried.
October 2, 2021
Neave is interested in exploring how well daughters can truly know their mothers, including the lives they led prior to having children. This brought to mind Peggy Frew’s Hope Farm and Anna Goldworthy’s Melting Moments – other Australian novels grappling with exactly this. I’m always interested in books that take in the lives of women through the generations and look at how identity is informed by family history.
October 31, 2021
Despite its bleakness, I quite enjoyed this novel. The writing is exquisite, and it was narrated in an impressionable way, a first-person narration that had an omniscient feel to it, particularly throughout part one where Bet is telling her mother’s story from before her own birth through to after. The story comes off as deeply personal, almost like a memoir in style. There is an element of unreliability to the narration too: Bet is telling her mother’s story, which she has learned second hand from a few diverse sources, as well as, in later years, relying on her own childhood memories and subjective impressions of her mother. Coupled with this is Sarah herself, and her scrapbooks, which she shares later with Bet as a roadmap of her own history. But how dependable is Sarah in this telling? Not very, I imagine. She has the ability to interpret her scrapbooks for Bet in anyway she chooses, and I did find Sarah to be a curious mix of naïve and manipulative as an adult.
‘As she told me about her life it felt as if it was drowning out my own.’
Neither of these characters, Sarah or Bet, were particularly likeable to me and yet I was able to admire them both, in pieces, and remain wholly invested in the story. I empathised with their trials and experiences, but I often found Sarah tiresome and Bet’s disconnection from everything and everyone disturbing. I do think the author has done an excellent job at demonstrating the way trauma can manifest itself throughout a person’s life, along with the way in which this trauma can be passed onto the next generation, almost like a genetic imprint. This story is complex with deep themes explored at both a personal and social level. It offers a glance at history through a political lens as well, which I enjoyed. And while it isn’t something that impacts the story as such, I do really love the cover, its styling as a sample of a page out of Sarah’s scrapbook so in tune with the story. Well done to the cover designers on this one.
Believe in Me is an intimate, complex, and affecting story of mother-daughter relations against a background of trauma and uncertainty. It’s beautifully written and will draw you in with its mesmerising narration and raw emotion. Highly recommended.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
‘As she told me about her life it felt as if it was drowning out my own.’
Neither of these characters, Sarah or Bet, were particularly likeable to me and yet I was able to admire them both, in pieces, and remain wholly invested in the story. I empathised with their trials and experiences, but I often found Sarah tiresome and Bet’s disconnection from everything and everyone disturbing. I do think the author has done an excellent job at demonstrating the way trauma can manifest itself throughout a person’s life, along with the way in which this trauma can be passed onto the next generation, almost like a genetic imprint. This story is complex with deep themes explored at both a personal and social level. It offers a glance at history through a political lens as well, which I enjoyed. And while it isn’t something that impacts the story as such, I do really love the cover, its styling as a sample of a page out of Sarah’s scrapbook so in tune with the story. Well done to the cover designers on this one.
Believe in Me is an intimate, complex, and affecting story of mother-daughter relations against a background of trauma and uncertainty. It’s beautifully written and will draw you in with its mesmerising narration and raw emotion. Highly recommended.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
August 25, 2021
It's just coincidence, but the last book I read was about a man trying to find out about his father's past, and now Lucy Neave's new novel Believe in Me traverses the same territory. This is part of the blurb:
This is how the novel begins, in 2004, with Bet (Bethany's) narration:
But there the resemblances end, because Believe in Me features characters who are very different to the hippie generation in Miles Allinson's In Moonland . Bet's mother Sarah came to Australia pregnant and unmarried in the 1970s because her mother was more worried about protecting the pastor Isaiah Woolcott's reputation than her daughter's welfare.
(I mean, seriously, in the sixties I knew of teenage girls being sent interstate to 'stay with an aunt', but being sent to another country far away is a whole different thing, eh?)
The plan, in which Sarah had neither say nor foreknowledge, was that she would be sent to one of those notorious 'homes for unmarried mothers' and that her baby would be given to her childless aunt. But Sarah had other ideas...
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/08/25/b...
Lucy Neave's moving and deeply personal second novel, Believe in Me, explores the relationships between mothers and their children across three generations of one family. The book questions what we can ever truly know of our parents' early lives, even as their experiences weave ineffably into our identities and destinies.
This is how the novel begins, in 2004, with Bet (Bethany's) narration:
I would like to write down the portions of my mother's story that I know, but I'm not sure exactly what happened to her in the year before I was born. At times, the anecdotes she told about her life make sense. At others, I traverse a tightrope high above the ground and have to fill the empty air beneath so that I can move from one known place and time to another. (p.3)
But there the resemblances end, because Believe in Me features characters who are very different to the hippie generation in Miles Allinson's In Moonland . Bet's mother Sarah came to Australia pregnant and unmarried in the 1970s because her mother was more worried about protecting the pastor Isaiah Woolcott's reputation than her daughter's welfare.
(I mean, seriously, in the sixties I knew of teenage girls being sent interstate to 'stay with an aunt', but being sent to another country far away is a whole different thing, eh?)
The plan, in which Sarah had neither say nor foreknowledge, was that she would be sent to one of those notorious 'homes for unmarried mothers' and that her baby would be given to her childless aunt. But Sarah had other ideas...
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/08/25/b...
December 7, 2021
Believe in Me traverses the lives of a mother and her daughter from 1974 through to 2004. The story begins with Sarah, an 18 year-old girl from upstate New York and it follows her first to a small town in Idaho where she travels as companion to an evangelical preacher, and then to Australia, where she is exiled into an unmarried mother’s home at the behest of her mother. There, Sarah defiantly fights to keep her baby and then sets out to build the best life she can for them in this strange new land.
Sarah’s daughter Bet is the omniscient narrator of Sarah’s life, which she tries to reconstruct by drawing on her memories, interpreting anecdotes her mother might have told her and from the scrapbooks Sarah kept, and which are filled with images, souvenirs and fragments from her life.
The story is rich with imagery, metaphor, biblical references and allusions as it deftly explores themes of identity, love, spiritual entrapment and the unknowability of others.
Sarah’s daughter Bet is the omniscient narrator of Sarah’s life, which she tries to reconstruct by drawing on her memories, interpreting anecdotes her mother might have told her and from the scrapbooks Sarah kept, and which are filled with images, souvenirs and fragments from her life.
The story is rich with imagery, metaphor, biblical references and allusions as it deftly explores themes of identity, love, spiritual entrapment and the unknowability of others.
April 11, 2022
This is more like 2.5 stars. I enjoyed the first third of this book and found the writing very interesting. However, as I continued the book seemed to go off in a strange direction - this is promoted as the story of 3 generations of people. Instead it really becomes the story of a mother and daughter and how their life is driven by the men they meet. There are a lot of strange and unsavoury characters in this story and I'm not really sure what the author is trying to achieve. This could just be personal taste and I definitely felt like there's something I've missed or not understood about the book.
October 10, 2021
A story of single mother Sarah and her relationship both with her mother & her daughter, as well as the various men in het life. Told from the daughter, Bet’s, point of view. She tells her mother’s story in an effort to try & understand her. Good story but felt something was lacking. I couldn’t quite feel for either character.
January 23, 2022
This book started off well. I enjoyed the first section. Then for me, it went downhill. Sarah seemed incredibly selfish and shallow, and very little seemed to happen. I pushed on , to see what the point of it all was. The ending was rather sweet, but overall, I was underwhelmed. This was not the book for me.
February 15, 2022
Almost didn’t finish this book because I got lost in the mid section as nothing seemed to be happening and the characters frustrated me so much. Yes, I trudged on to see what happened and am glad I did, but I’m not inspired to read any other novels by this author. The style of writing was fine, it was the subject that seemed to promise much at the start but then dragged.
November 26, 2021
I was so pleasantly surprised by this book. daughter/mother/daughter all unique and interesting. Also starts with an interrogation of the culture of the early years when unwed pregnancy is shameful.
December 20, 2021
This was engaging. Exploration of the relationships and conflicts between mothers and daughters and the effect trauma has on a person and te ripple effects on people around them. Covered some pretty heavy topics in a superficial way - rape, gender identity issues, domestic violence.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 12, 2022
I persevered with this book; I’m not sure it is accurately described in the blurb as it was definitely not what I expected. It had a promising start but I think it lost its way somewhere in the middle.
August 1, 2024
Leaning toward 2.5 stars. An easy read, well written although I found the characters a bit annoying and the ending a bit of a quick wrap up. Not sure this book would leave everyone feeling fully satisfied.
November 5, 2021
A complex story about three generations of women in a family. I kept reading so it engaged me but only would give the story three stars.
November 20, 2021
Heart warming novel bur strange family dynamics
January 18, 2022
Some beautiful writing, but it did wander in many places. Unreliable narrator and at times I was left to wonder where Sarah or Bet had got the money from to do the things they did.
May 22, 2022
Was looking forward to this book as it came highly recommended. It was ok but nothing I would recommend
Read
June 18, 2022DNF
Got 1/4 of the way through and lost interest
Got 1/4 of the way through and lost interest
December 10, 2022
DNF Honestly where was this going
October 29, 2023
Explores relationship between mother and daughter after mother is sent to Australia as unmarried mother prior to her birth
October 13, 2021
Riverbend Book Club Oct - thoroughly depressing. Ick. Started okay then went downhill with the daughter. Does make me wonder how reliable Bet was as the narrator of Sarah’s story. Lame Titanic move.
September 19, 2021
Lovers of family sagas will adore this beautiful and tenderly told story.
As Bet looks into her mother’s past, she uncovers secrets and stories and confronts heartaches - her own, her mother’s and her grandmother’s.
This is a story about family and identity. It’s about a mother and daughter trying to find their way back to each other and about each individual coming to terms with their mistakes and the road they’ve travelled, while seeking more from the future.
I really enjoyed this story and was especially moved by its beautiful conclusion.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
As Bet looks into her mother’s past, she uncovers secrets and stories and confronts heartaches - her own, her mother’s and her grandmother’s.
This is a story about family and identity. It’s about a mother and daughter trying to find their way back to each other and about each individual coming to terms with their mistakes and the road they’ve travelled, while seeking more from the future.
I really enjoyed this story and was especially moved by its beautiful conclusion.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews