KATE KEMP The Grapevine. Reviewed by Sally Nimon

Psychologist Kate Kemp’s debut novel opens with blood spatters and goes on to unravel the secrets of a suburban street in 1970s Australia.

The time is 1979. The place (namely Warrah Place) is suburban Canberra. It’s summer and the heat is oppressive, disrupting the routines of normal life. A housewife is down on her knees scrubbing the bathroom tiles. This isn’t necessarily unusual, except that what she is scrubbing is the ‘spatter’ that lies across the floor and up the wall. There is blood on the strap of her watch, meaning – she thinks to herself – that ‘It would have to go too.’ As the next few paragraphs unfold, she muses on how life will never be the same because someone called Antonio Marietti is dead. Of course it is possible that these events are not connected, but given the level of the housewife’s anxiety and the fact that this is the start of a novel, that would seem to be unlikely.

So begins The Grapevine, a novel by ‘systemic psychotherapist’ Kate Kemp. In the promotional material accompanying the proof copy, she reveals that she grew up in a street very like Warrah Place, at a time when Australia was on the cusp of social, cultural and economic change, and ‘It made sense to me to create a character … a 12 year old, occupying that perilous, hope-ridden territory between childhood and adolescence.’ And that is what we find – an Australia that is still in that awkward transition of moving away from its colonial roots and traditional values towards the diverse, dynamic and multifaceted country we live in today.

The 12 year old in question is Tammy, only child of Helen and Duncan, overly curious and with an undirected intelligence that could easily turn disruptive and destructive. Given a current lack of structure – it’s the long summer break after Christmas – her attention has turned towards an obsessive investigation of the life and habits of backyard ants that is taking her into the vicinity (and sometimes the backyards) of the various neighbours living around her. Between chapters we learn, in drip-feed manner, what she has discovered: that ants are social beings; that they work together against a hostile world; that sometimes they can inexplicably turn against each other; that the queen is not always in charge and things are not always what they seem. So too is life in Warrah Place, where the veil of outward normality is used as a shield to hide a multitude of secrets best kept tight behind suburban walls.

The Mariettis are recent arrivals, appearing unexpectedly to occupy ‘the Italian House’, a grand structure with tall, pale pillars that jars in a 1970s suburban landscape. Antonio, the son, a suave young man, dresses well, moves with confidence and has hands that are ‘beautiful and exact’. This instantly raises as much suspicion among some members of the community as it does attraction for others. To some he is charismatic and alluring, to others arrogant and a thief:

Peggy told Naomi that Antonio was charming. Maureen agreed. ‘An irrepressible flirt,’ she said. ‘So funny.’ Naomi couldn’t see it. With her, he was curt. He turned up whenever he wanted. He refused cups of tea. He left without saying goodbye. What was so wrong with her that he could barely bring himself to be civil?

But when his distinctive foot is found in nearby parkland – absent the rest of his body – the residents of Warrah Place are sent scrambling to try and make sense of what has happened. Is he dead? Has he met with foul play? If so, where is the rest of him? Was he a victim of outside forces, or is there a devil within?

Like many crime stories, The Grapevine is less concerned with the murder itself than the disruption the act creates within a relatively closed community and how it forces out into the open things that a 1970s society was less equipped to understand and manage. Why have the Laus fled their native Hong Kong and come to live so far away? Are Lydia and Ursula really ‘sisters’ or is there another reason they share a house? Are Joe and Zlata really traumatised survivors of World War II or are they hiding more sinister truths?

And then there is the allure of rumour and gossip rushing in to fill the void in the absence of actual evidence. As Tammy reflects when she makes what seems to be a sudden and shocking discovery:

Tammy had a vague sense that secrets acted as currency for intimacy. She’d seen it over and over again from the outside: juicy morsels whispered to cement alliances, to draw a boundary that kept a friendship within it tight and insulated from those not in the know.

This is a narrative that unfolds slowly, evoking an unfamiliar time when we weren’t at the constant beck and call of media or text messages or fluid workplace hours. This can make the pacing feel uneven, though this could of course be the effect of the passage of forty odd years.

In 2025, it can also be hard to remember there was a time when routine realities of human existence might have been considered ‘secrets’ and hidden behind closed doors. For many of us alive today, it is hard to reconcile why issues of sexuality or ethnicity or gender-focused violence might be considered so shameful people would rather tolerate persecution than dare to speak out. Why do things considered so horrifying to one generation become commonplace to the next?

Perhaps we need a psychotherapist to answer that.

Kate Kemp The Grapevine Hachette 2025 PB 352pp $32.99

Sally Nimon once graduated from university with an Honours degree majoring in English literature and has hung around higher education ever since. She is also an avid reader and keen devourer of stories, whatever the genre.

You can buy The Grapevine from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.

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Tags: 1970s, Australian suburbs, Australian women writers, Canberra, Kate | Kemp, murder mystery