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The Other Side of the Season: Seasons Collection

This Australian family story is set in NSW, near Byron Bay, and reflects the surrounding country and lifestyle beautifully. Initially in 2015 we are taken on a road trip with a brother and sister. They are Sydney, and her brother Jake, who are setting out for a bit of respite in Byron Bay. Sydney is pregnant and alone, and Jake has never really settled down.

 The beginning of the story though, jumps back to 1979. Natalie, who later becomes mother to Sydney and Jake, is a young girl who lives on a banana plantation. She was adopted, as was her brother Albie, to help out on the farm. Next to them is another banana plantation with brothers Matthew and David, and their parents. Natalie and David are very close, as they share a common love of painting and plan to run away together one day and open a gallery.

 The story is quite complex, as David is injured and Natalie, so determined to leave the farm, that she convinces Matthew to go with her and marry her instead. As with all families, the parents’ background never ceases to play a role in their day to day lives. You see Sydney is not Matthew’s baby, but his brother David’s. There are a great many issues raised here and discussed. Child abuse in Children’s Homes is one of them.

 Natalie seems to compound her mistakes by always saying “Never look back”, which is a great way to avoid looking at the past and trying to rectify mistakes, or facing up to past errors. The children have no knowledge of their grandparents’, or their parents’ childhood, so when they stumble upon the remains of the banana plantation and the family there, they are in for a very large shock. Sydney and Jake have no idea that this is where there parents lived.

 There are many tragedies that befall these families, with Sydney and Jake about to uncover all of them. As the story unfolds, by moving from the 1970’s to 2015, everyone is confronted by the past, and as Sydney says, “There’s another side to every story.”

 The themes that are identified in this story are numerous, but parenting and families are the themes that dominate the tale.  For Natalie’s love of family, many a twisted logic has been used as Natalie, having grown up in an Orphanage, views parenting as an art she has never learned, and this again is the crux of the story.

Author Jen J McLeod
Publisher Simon and Schuster Australia
ISBN 9781925030310
Website http://www.simonandschuster.com.au
Distributor Simon And Schuster Australia
Released May 2016