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The mint lawn
Winner of the 1990 Australian/Vogel Award, GIllian Meares' debut novel is set on the north coast of New South Wales and tells the story of the varied relationships and personal growth of a 25-year-old woman in a rural community.
North Coast, New South Wales. Clementine is twenty-five and still living in the place where she grew up, rooted there by memories and her own inability to make changes until she has understood her past. The past is dominated by memories of her mother, and her mother, and her mother's attempts to dramatise and enrich small-town life and the perceptions of her three clever, receptive daughters.
But only Clementine has stayed. Is this out of loyalty to her mother's memory? Or to comfort her father? Perhaps she wants to find peace with Hugh, her earnest husband in whose house she most uncomfortably lives? Or is the lure Thomas, who alone can appreciate Clementine's own sensuality, and her humour, but who must remain another of her secrets.
In The Mint Lawn, Gillian Mears has written a wonderful debut novel which will be read with pleasure and remembered with joy.
'Gillian Mears writes like an angel.' - Kate Veitch, The Age
'... powerful and beautifully balanced.' - Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser
North Coast, New South Wales. Clementine is twenty-five and still living in the place where she grew up, rooted there by memories and her own inability to make changes until she has understood her past. The past is dominated by memories of her mother, and her mother, and her mother's attempts to dramatise and enrich small-town life and the perceptions of her three clever, receptive daughters.
But only Clementine has stayed. Is this out of loyalty to her mother's memory? Or to comfort her father? Perhaps she wants to find peace with Hugh, her earnest husband in whose house she most uncomfortably lives? Or is the lure Thomas, who alone can appreciate Clementine's own sensuality, and her humour, but who must remain another of her secrets.
In The Mint Lawn, Gillian Mears has written a wonderful debut novel which will be read with pleasure and remembered with joy.
'Gillian Mears writes like an angel.' - Kate Veitch, The Age
'... powerful and beautifully balanced.' - Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser
298 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
10 people are currently reading
179 people want to read
About the author
Gillian Mears
19 books28 followersGillian Mears was an Australian short story writer and novelist.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 29, 2016
Although the writing here is very good, and the author's attention to detail noteworthy, I found this story was a bit too unrelentingly intense to be valued in any particular sense.
The air of desolation throughout doesn't let up and [for me] started to become oppressive by the middle to end of the book...it felt too uncomfortably like eavesdropping on a story I didn't want to hear, but now I'd heard it I couldn't "unhear" it, and had to keep listening.
Many parts of it made me cringe, and many parts were just totally off-putting.
Gillian Mears' graphic observations of just about everything made this an often uncomfortable and sometimes intensely burdensome read.
Her acute attention to the detail in every observation gives the reader a clear sense of the picture being drawn, and an often disquieting invitation into the dark and even intimate recesses of the human mind.
This is my first book by this author and I can't say that I liked it that much, though I do see why her writing is held with such esteem.
I will read more of her work though, and in fact have two more books waiting, because I don't want to gauge my view of her writing on this one book.
3★s
January 15, 2018
Phew. I found The Mint Lawn by Gillian Mears intense. And dense. I was expecting to become completely absorbed (as I did with Foal’s Bread) but instead, I got bogged down in heavy prose, the shifting timeline, and emotionally taxing characters.
The story is set in the fictional town of Jacaranda, on the north coast of New South Wales (I believe Jacaranda is based on the town of Grafton). Clementine, aged twenty-five and married to her high-school music teacher, Hugh, is still living in the place where she grew up, bound by memories and her inability to make sense of past events. Told from Clementine’s point-of-view, the story rotates around her sisters, her parents (Ventry and Cairo), her grandmother, Hugh and her lover.
But it is one of those memory stories that has accumulated colours and meanings more potent than the event itself.
Mears reveals the climax of the family’s story early in the book, and then zigzags back and forth in time, building the narrative from Clementine’s perspective as a child, a teenager and as an adult. There are no startling plot twists, this book is a character study and by the end, you understand the motivations and sadness of each person.
There is no question that Mears writes beautifully. Her descriptions are fulsome and arresting, from the simplest – ‘Around us the air is threadbare’ – to those that have particularly evocative details –
I dog-paddle into the middle. It’s like moving into a geometric dream. I paddle into angles and a blue sense of formality… I submerge again, remembering how Sky, Alex and I used to sit at the bottom of the pool for as long as we could: exchanging obscenities and hopes that couldn’t be heard.
But I did find The Mint Lawn demanding and unrelenting reading. There’s lots of references to bums, nipples and knobs. Lots about ants, eating sweets and ripening fruit. Lots of gauche music lesson memories. Lots of things were damp or moist – whether that be crotches, bathroom walls or old bedding. I’m sure I was supposed to infer some greater meaning in these repeated motifs but by the halfway point, I was feeling weary.
Only we noted the heaviness of her breasts under her wet gardening dress and the way Ventry held them from behind. Like they were a soft milk-giving fruit. Like they were soft fruit. This was in the early, prosperous, laughing days when Cairo could still love him best of all, or at least enough.
‘I’m like a little boy, darling.’ I open my eyes. ‘I look like a statue! Look.’ He puts my tea down and clasps his balls. ‘See how tight and round they’ve gone. Woke up with them like that. Winter must really be here.’
The characters, on their own, are fascinating. Clementine’s father, Ventry, is charming, and her mother, Cairo, intriguing.
She was our restless mother. She’s a glitter of unreliable memories. She’s my own personal mystery now who could laugh or cry her face crooked with emotion.
But it is in Hugh that Mears has created one of the most memorable and horrible characters that I have ever come across. His veiled cruelty, his pettiness, his bigotry, his stinginess and ultimately his nastiness know no limits. Clementine, once accommodating of his foibles (and they are particular – he subscribes to Majesty magazine, wears nightshirts and ‘…hops on board an exercise bike each morning. I hold open a Time Life Cities of the World volume. In this way, Hugh believes, we are eliminating the need ever to travel in countries where English is not spoken‘) becomes restless. Her restlessness translates in various ways, from rubbing grease into Hugh’s Princess Diana tea towel to taking a lover. Hugh made me feel physically ill – that’s terrific writing.
3.5/5 The memorable characters made it worth the slog but it was hard reading.
The story is set in the fictional town of Jacaranda, on the north coast of New South Wales (I believe Jacaranda is based on the town of Grafton). Clementine, aged twenty-five and married to her high-school music teacher, Hugh, is still living in the place where she grew up, bound by memories and her inability to make sense of past events. Told from Clementine’s point-of-view, the story rotates around her sisters, her parents (Ventry and Cairo), her grandmother, Hugh and her lover.
But it is one of those memory stories that has accumulated colours and meanings more potent than the event itself.
Mears reveals the climax of the family’s story early in the book, and then zigzags back and forth in time, building the narrative from Clementine’s perspective as a child, a teenager and as an adult. There are no startling plot twists, this book is a character study and by the end, you understand the motivations and sadness of each person.
There is no question that Mears writes beautifully. Her descriptions are fulsome and arresting, from the simplest – ‘Around us the air is threadbare’ – to those that have particularly evocative details –
I dog-paddle into the middle. It’s like moving into a geometric dream. I paddle into angles and a blue sense of formality… I submerge again, remembering how Sky, Alex and I used to sit at the bottom of the pool for as long as we could: exchanging obscenities and hopes that couldn’t be heard.
But I did find The Mint Lawn demanding and unrelenting reading. There’s lots of references to bums, nipples and knobs. Lots about ants, eating sweets and ripening fruit. Lots of gauche music lesson memories. Lots of things were damp or moist – whether that be crotches, bathroom walls or old bedding. I’m sure I was supposed to infer some greater meaning in these repeated motifs but by the halfway point, I was feeling weary.
Only we noted the heaviness of her breasts under her wet gardening dress and the way Ventry held them from behind. Like they were a soft milk-giving fruit. Like they were soft fruit. This was in the early, prosperous, laughing days when Cairo could still love him best of all, or at least enough.
‘I’m like a little boy, darling.’ I open my eyes. ‘I look like a statue! Look.’ He puts my tea down and clasps his balls. ‘See how tight and round they’ve gone. Woke up with them like that. Winter must really be here.’
The characters, on their own, are fascinating. Clementine’s father, Ventry, is charming, and her mother, Cairo, intriguing.
She was our restless mother. She’s a glitter of unreliable memories. She’s my own personal mystery now who could laugh or cry her face crooked with emotion.
But it is in Hugh that Mears has created one of the most memorable and horrible characters that I have ever come across. His veiled cruelty, his pettiness, his bigotry, his stinginess and ultimately his nastiness know no limits. Clementine, once accommodating of his foibles (and they are particular – he subscribes to Majesty magazine, wears nightshirts and ‘…hops on board an exercise bike each morning. I hold open a Time Life Cities of the World volume. In this way, Hugh believes, we are eliminating the need ever to travel in countries where English is not spoken‘) becomes restless. Her restlessness translates in various ways, from rubbing grease into Hugh’s Princess Diana tea towel to taking a lover. Hugh made me feel physically ill – that’s terrific writing.
3.5/5 The memorable characters made it worth the slog but it was hard reading.
December 15, 2019
I found this book to be a hard slog which I had to force myself to read and force myself to finish. I often struggle with these ‘talented’ ‘literary’ authors. I’m not sure why writing so descriptively means that critics laud your writing as far more intelligent and more worthy than more commercial writers but I guess that’s just how the industry rates things. I often feel the authors and books celebrated like this have a distinct stench of the emporer’s new clothes (excepting Charlotte Wood and Margaret Atwood).
The whole story is suffused with that specific sadness peculiar to naturally intelligent people who consider themselves ‘stuck living’ in regional areas. Particularly those who languish in procrastination and laziness whilst committing acts of daily self destruction. I spent many school holidays observing this behaviour in my own relatives: The sudden spurts of inspiration for self improvement which quickly peter out, the yearning for a different existence, the snobby self aggrandising obsession with things (local art, mail order boutique clothes, obscure food items) they think makes them better than ‘city folk’. It’s all here in graphic detail in the characters of this book. I was interested to read it because I read many years ago that the story was so biographical the authors relatives wouldn’t speak to her for a long time after publishing, and the author did marry her high school history teacher and then leave him. This is all laid out in the story in fluorescently cruel detail. I’m surprised her ex ever spoke to her again. Anyway, what I mostly feel is relief for finally crossing this off my to do list and relief that I’ve never lived in Grafton.
The whole story is suffused with that specific sadness peculiar to naturally intelligent people who consider themselves ‘stuck living’ in regional areas. Particularly those who languish in procrastination and laziness whilst committing acts of daily self destruction. I spent many school holidays observing this behaviour in my own relatives: The sudden spurts of inspiration for self improvement which quickly peter out, the yearning for a different existence, the snobby self aggrandising obsession with things (local art, mail order boutique clothes, obscure food items) they think makes them better than ‘city folk’. It’s all here in graphic detail in the characters of this book. I was interested to read it because I read many years ago that the story was so biographical the authors relatives wouldn’t speak to her for a long time after publishing, and the author did marry her high school history teacher and then leave him. This is all laid out in the story in fluorescently cruel detail. I’m surprised her ex ever spoke to her again. Anyway, what I mostly feel is relief for finally crossing this off my to do list and relief that I’ve never lived in Grafton.
September 22, 2017
After having read Foal's Bread and absolutely loved it, I was keen to read more from this author and started with this, her debut novel. While it was beautifully written, I didn't enjoy the novel nearly as much. It was a rather bleak and unsatisfactory novel for me. I felt the use of shifting timelines a little messy and it was one of thosse books that, while the premise of the story is promising, the characters just did not come alive for me and so I failed to really connect with any of them. This, for me, made the novel a little boring. And given the intensity of the story and the characters I was rather relieved when it finished.
June 20, 2020
This book has been living on my shelf for years and I decided to reread it, remembering I had enjoyed it once but not remembering much about the plot.
I'm glad I revisited it. Mears captures an Australia that I know, if not from first-hand experience of life in a sometimes-suffocating small town, but through the culture and story we have in common.
The main character of the novel is Clementine, who is twenty-five years old and married to a man many years her senior, and she is as restless as any young person could be. Her story unfolds with flashbacks to the childhood that ties her to the town, and the tragedy of her mother's death is a parallel story that is entwined in the lives of Clementine and her sisters. It's not till she understands the past that Clementine can overcome her inability to make changes.
Mears has a particular gift for describing people in a few succinct sentences, so you understand you need to know about them. This is true of secondary characters who wander in and out of the story, and is developed more fully for the main characters. We meet Clementine at younger ages, see her as child, then grow through her teens and into adulthood. Memories and events come vividly alive through Mears' writing, which is full of detail, longing, power and poetry. And all of this in what was her debut novel, which makes it all the more extraordinary. I recommend this novel.
(This review was written when I was still about fifty pages from reaching the end, but I expect to enjoy the remainder as much as I have enjoyed what I have read so far)
I'm glad I revisited it. Mears captures an Australia that I know, if not from first-hand experience of life in a sometimes-suffocating small town, but through the culture and story we have in common.
The main character of the novel is Clementine, who is twenty-five years old and married to a man many years her senior, and she is as restless as any young person could be. Her story unfolds with flashbacks to the childhood that ties her to the town, and the tragedy of her mother's death is a parallel story that is entwined in the lives of Clementine and her sisters. It's not till she understands the past that Clementine can overcome her inability to make changes.
Mears has a particular gift for describing people in a few succinct sentences, so you understand you need to know about them. This is true of secondary characters who wander in and out of the story, and is developed more fully for the main characters. We meet Clementine at younger ages, see her as child, then grow through her teens and into adulthood. Memories and events come vividly alive through Mears' writing, which is full of detail, longing, power and poetry. And all of this in what was her debut novel, which makes it all the more extraordinary. I recommend this novel.
(This review was written when I was still about fifty pages from reaching the end, but I expect to enjoy the remainder as much as I have enjoyed what I have read so far)
January 4, 2015
I was keen to read this because it's set in my home town of Grafton, and the author is the ex-wife of one of my high school teachers (who one of the book's characters is based on). I loved the references to Grafton (even though it's not named) but I hated the rest of the book! My mum wanted to borrow the book because of its setting, but she only got a few pages into it before realising she couldn't get any further.
June 16, 2014
Twenty years on, The Mint Lawn is as extraordinary as ever.
April 8, 2018
DNF . Loved the writing, but too bleak so just read the ending. Glad I skipped most of the middle.
July 12, 2020
A truly gifted writer. Set in Grafton, the novel is a compelling tale of small town claustrophobia, misogyny, homophobia and a young life squandered. Oppressive but hard to put down.
October 28, 2020
Ebook. The writing is good but the story is so bleak and this time I couldn’t connect.
November 10, 2021
Shockingly self reflective
January 31, 2022
tedious
February 21, 2023
I enjoyed the modern stuff but the flashbacks were a drag. Honestly would be a much better novella.
May 8, 2023
Not interested
September 24, 2013
The Mint Lawn is bursting at the seams with the intensity of childhood, family and small town life. For me there were echoes of The Man Who Loved Children in the unconventional restless mother and feeling of being under an ever-critical microscope. Foals Bread lead me to The Mint Lawn and I am in awe of Gillian Mears' ability as a writer.
November 26, 2014
What a mix- tough but so tender, nostalgic but never sentimental, painful clarity and courage not to turn away from harsh truth but never heartless. Sometimes a difficult and intense read but impossible not to come back. Richly evocative of a time and place and an emotional landscape seen with an unflinching eye and delivered with a incandescent skill.
April 8, 2014
Oh dear. Brilliant but so brutally honest about the fallibility of human nature and the damage caused to others as we try to realise our dreams.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews