Blue Hour

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What to expect

From the Women's Prize longlisted author of SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE comes a masterful reworking of the road novel into a portrait of the complex relationship between mothers and daughters.

She thinks of blue mountain, her favourite place. 'We're going somewhere where we can be safe. We never have to come back here.'

As the rest of the world lies sleeping, Eleanor straps her infant daughter, Amy, into the back of her car. This is the moment she knew must come, when they will walk out on her husband Leon and a marriage in ruins since his return from Vietnam. Together, she and Amy will journey to blue mountain, a place of enchantment and refuge that lit up Eleanor's childhood.

As the car eats up the miles, so Eleanor's mind dives back into her fractured relationship with her mother, Kitty. Kitty who asked for so much from life, from love, from family. Kitty who had battled so hard to prise her husband George out of the grip of war. Kitty, whose disapproving voice rings so loud in Eleanor's head.

Tense, visceral, glittering, it is a masterful return to fiction from the author of the acclaimed See What I Have Done.

(P) 2022 Hachette Australia

Critics Review

  • Blue Hour realises the promise evident in Schmidt’s lauded debut See What I Have Done . . . it doesn’t loudly declare itself to be an astonishing novel as it inexorably unfolds, but astonishing it most certainly is

    Weekend Australian

  • Assured

    Sydney Morning Herald

  • Without a doubt one of the most thought-provoking novels I have read. Fans of compelling literary fiction can’t go past this – Schmidt is an incredible Australian writer

    Better Reading

  • Schmidt’s skill for making readers ponder raw and uncomfortable realities is profound . . . This is a mother-daughter story which fills the page with all those parts of womanhood the world does not want you to know about – a hard-to-swallow novel that I urge you to read

    Readings

  • A brilliant novel that can’t help but leave a mark on its readers . . . so compelling it’s hard to look away

    Herald Sun

  • Schmidt’s skill as a writer is her ability to create page-turning literary fiction . . . With its storylines steeped in war and violence and the randomness of life, this new novel has more than an echo of Kate Atkinson. The prose is elegant and finely crafted. Schmidt writes clear, rhythmic sentences, full of cadence and inventive imagery . . . a tense, action-packed novel full of strange, sometimes surreal outcomes

    Irish Times

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