The Mother Fault
by Kate Mildenhall
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Pub Date Sep 02 2020 | Archive Date Jul 22 2020
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Description
‘A triumph of a novel. Five stars. I loved it. Thrilling, confronting, page-turning and heartbreakingly poignant, The Mother Fault is a remarkable story.' Jane Harper, bestselling author of The Dry
You will not recognise me, she thinks, when I find you . . .
Mim’s husband is missing. No one knows where Ben is, but everyone wants to find him – especially The Department. And they should know, the all-seeing government body has fitted the entire population with a universal tracking chip to keep them ‘safe’.
But suddenly Ben can’t be tracked. And Mim is questioned, made to surrender her passport and threatened with the unthinkable – her two children being taken into care at the notorious BestLife.
Cornered, Mim risks everything to go on the run to find her husband – and a part of herself, long gone, that is brave enough to tackle the journey ahead.
From the stark backroads of the Australian outback to a terrifying sea voyage, Mim is forced to shuck off who she was – mother, daughter, wife, sister – and become the woman she needs to be to save her family and herself.
Longlisted for the 2021 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the 2020 Aurealis Awards, Best Science Fiction Novel
‘Sublime . . . a timely, riveting, warning bell of a book.’ Books+Publishing
‘Brilliant. A raw, urgent, white-knuckle ride through a world only a heartbeat away’ James Bradley, author of Ghost Species
‘Clever, political, pacy and exciting. Pure diamond-edged propulsive power.’ Chris Flynn, author of Mammoth
‘Shook me to my core. I could not put it down’ Alice Robinson, author of The Glad Shout
‘A clarion call, wrapped in vivid prose, inside a truly thrilling read’ Angela Savage, author of Behind the Night Bazaar
‘An unvarnished, beautifully written, totally authentic tribute to the everyday badassery and bullshit of motherhood, to the ordinary extraordinariness of women. It’s also a fast-paced edge-of-your-seat, heart-in-your-mouth adventure with an ending worthy of a Homeland season finale.’ Anna Downes, author of The Safe Place
'A literary thriller that speaks precisely, devastatingly, to its time.' The Monthly
'Kate Mildenhall has imagined a world as terrifying and visionary as Margaret Atwood’s Gilead, with the pace of the best thrillers – and characters I’ll never forget. This is a novel of rare insight from a rising literary star.' J.P. Pomare, author of Call Me Evie
'The true power of this novel is in its appalling plausibility. That, and the fact that it is impossible to put down.’ Readings Monthly
Advance Praise
‘A shattering lightning bolt of a book.’ Karen Viggers, author of The Lightkeeper’s Wife
‘A clarion call, wrapped in vivid prose, inside a truly thrilling read’ Angela Savage, author of Mother of Pearl and Behind the Night Bazaar
‘Shook me to my core. I could not put it down’ Alice Robinson, author of Anchor Point and The Glad Shout
‘Mildenhall has imagined a world as terrifying and visionary as Margaret Atwood’s Gilead, with the pace of the best thrillers – and characters I’ll never forget’ J.P. Pomare, author of Call Me Evie and In the Clearing
‘With The Mother Fault Mildenhall has achieved that rare thing – a book that at once tackles the big issues and is an addictive page-turner.’ Melanie Cheng, author of Australia Day and Room for a Stranger
‘Compelling and deeply human. The Mother Fault is an urgent call from a future which is at once terrifying and familiar.' Kristina Olsson, award-winning author of Shell and Boy, Lost
‘Brilliant. A raw, urgent, white-knuckle ride through a world only a heartbeat away’ James Bradley, author of Clade and Ghost Species
‘Clever, political, pacy and exciting. The Mother Fault is pure diamond-edged propulsive power. Book of the year.’ Chris Flynn, author of Mammoth
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781760854478 |
| PRICE | A$32.99 (AUD) |
| PAGES | 336 |
Featured Reviews
Reviewer 395432
The Mother Fault is a wonderfully bingeable thriller with a simple premise: Mim’s husband goes missing, she sets off across land and sea to find him—with two kids in tow and the authorities on her tail. Set in the near future, Mildenhall’s imagined dystopia is likewise fairly uncomplicated: a surveillance state in a climate-changed world.
Keeping things relatively simple is the key here to believable world-building and creating very real stakes for Mim and her family. It might be set in the future, but Mim has to go low-tech to avoid capture, so the story isn’t leaning so much on the ‘future’ aspect as it is on the chase and the accompanying family drama.
Unlike some other dystopian thrillers I could name, there is some superb writing here. In particular, Mim’s kids, 11-year-old Essie and 6-year-old Sam, are two of the most ‘real’ fictional children I’ve ever come across. Many of the descriptions of the landscape, as Mim drives across Australia’s vast interior, are gorgeously rendered.
The Mother Fault gets so much so right that it is easy to forgive it some far-fetched moments and a clunky romantic subplot. A really cracking, pageturning read.
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