Formulaic, and predictable in terms of the final outcome. Characters that are very lovable and characters that everyone will hate. ( )

A Home Like Ours offers an informative, occasionally troubling, but ultimately uplifting exploration of the lives of women in rural Australia.
The story is told from three separate perspectives, those of Tara, Helen and Jade.
Tara Hooper is among Boolanga's more affluent citizens, sharing her beautifully renovated heritage home with her husband Jon and two gorgeous children. She and her husband own the district's profitable hardware & nursery business, are part of a tight circle of friends and, on the surface at least, appear to have it all. But appearances aren't everything - Jon works long hours to maintain their store's market share in the face of competition from multinational competitors further affield, and often appears bored or disinterested. Tara is feeling unappreciated and angry, suspicious of Jon's apparent lack of attraction to her. She's taken up running with a personal trainer as a distraction from her increasing worries about the future of her marriage.
Helen Demetriou is entering later middle age without the security she'd always expected to have. She's endured periods of homelessness and subsists from day to day on her meagre income earned from a local takeaway store and her stipend as caretaker of Boolanga's community garden. Her brusque demeanour hides a sensitive soul who is fearful for her future and wary of forming close bonds with others in case they let her down. An activist at heart, Helen antagonises the rather conservative members of the community garden committee by pushing for the inclusion of all members of the community, rather than just the privileged few. Her long term goal is to establish a "tiny house" village for the use of older women who, like herself, have become homeless due to changed family and/or employment circumstances.
Jade Innes is the 19-year-old single mother of baby Milo. She's desperate to do a better job of parenting than her own mother, but is rather hamstrung by the disinterested attitude of Milo's father, an itinerant farm worker who seems more interested in drinking with his mates than being there for Jade and Milo. Jade's making tentative steps to make connections in Boolanga, joining the library to indulge her love of literature, and rather begrudgingly accepting a plot in the community garden, in which she can grow vegetables to eat and the flowers she's really more interested in.
The three women's lives intersect, and all three also make connections among the women from Boolanga's former refugee communities, originally from Afghanistan and Sudan. Initial prejudices and misconceptions are gradually broken down as new friendships are forged and each of the three main characters undergoes a sort of catharsis in terms of how they see themselves, their lives and their ideas of community.
Having grown up in a mid-sized rural town not too far north of fictional Boolanga's setting on the Victorian side of the great Murray River, I felt that Fiona Lowe's depiction of small town society, dynamics and xenophobia were well-described and representative of the reality many inhabitants experience. While there are many benefits of living in a smaller community, they can also be quite insular and offer limited opportunities for those who are struggling socially and/or financially.
The stories of all three women resonated with me, although my own present life circumstances probably most closely resemble those of the more privileged character, Tara. I found Lowe's storyline around the experience of unexpected chronic and debilitating illness particularly poignant.
At almost 600 pages, A Home Like Ours is a hefty tome and requires a reasonable degree of commitment from the reader. I haven't previously been a frequent reader of the "women's literature" genre beloved by so many of my friends and family, and it took me several chapters to really get into the feel of the book. However, by the halfway point I was well and truly hooked by the characters and their stories. I raced through the last portion of the book in a single sitting.
I'd recommend A Home Like Ours to readers interested in the lived experience of women, the challenges and wonderful gifts that come with living in an evolving multicultural community, and the importance of community in creating a sense of individual and group wellbeing.
My thanks to the author, Fiona Lowe, publisher Harlequin Australia (HQ Fiction / Mira) and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this title.
For additional information, see: https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781489298683/a-home-like-ours/ ( )

“Life was an unpredictable lottery. But surrounded by a community and a garden, the future was easier to face.”

An insightful, warm and engaging story, A Home Like Ours is another fabulous novel from award winning Australian author Fiona Lowe.

When Helen arrived in the small town of Boolanga in rural Victoria three years ago, she had been living in her car, searching for work, and a place to call home. Now, having secured a position as a caretaker of the town’s community garden which provides her with a small cottage, her new found stability is threatened when she insists a local group of refugee women be provided with plots.
Jade is a young mother with no family to speak of and a deadbeat, often absent, partner. To supplement her meagre pension, and provide her baby son with organic produce, she reluctantly agrees to assist Helen in the community garden. Though initially distrustful of everyone, especially the refugees, Jade slowly discovers a place she could belong.
Tara doesn’t understand why her husband, hardware store owner, Jon, seems to have lost interest in her. Wrapped up in her own self-pity, she is stunned when he is diagnosed with a debilitating condition, and is forced to consider what community really means.

The central theme of A Home Like Ours focuses on the effects of displacement. Like the protagonists of Lowe’s story, almost all of us are vulnerable to events such as illness, injury, relationship breakdown, unemployment, unplanned pregnancy, as well as extreme situations like war, which could result in a complete change of circumstance.

To face these sorts of unexpected challenges requires the support of a community - of family, of friends, and often even strangers. Lowe’s decision to centre the story on the town’s community garden is a clever one. Not only is it a site that allows her to reflect the population of the town at large, but it’s also a setting in which her very different characters can plausibly meet.

Portrayed with a realistic complexity, I really liked Lowe’s characters and found their stories to be engaging. It’s impressive that she is able to credibly depict women who are of widely disparate ages and backgrounds, and have diverse concerns. I would have liked for Fiza, a Sudanese refugee, to have had a larger role in the story, though I can understand why Lowe likely shied away from doing so.

Lowe also explores a range of specific issues relevant in Australia at the moment including racist attitudes towards refugees from African countries, the rise of homelessness experienced by women over 55, the inadequacy of current social support payments, the lack of support programs in rural areas, and government corruption. It seems like a lot, but these issues overlap and intertwine, enriching the story, and informing the reader.

I barely noticed that A Home Like Ours was almost 600 pages long, engrossed in the well-paced story I finished it in a day. This is a wonderful read that encourages empathy, compassion and community. ( )