KATE MILDENHALL The Hiding Place. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart

Kate Mildenhall’s fourth novel takes a group of progressive urbanites into the bush and exposes the conflicts and contradictions among them.

This novel moves from the familiar and domestic to a place of unimaginable horror with an ending that will make you gasp. A group of old friends has pooled funds and bought a rural property as a retreat, a bush block they can escape to from the city. This weekend, they have come together for their first visit. First and last.

These characters – thinking, aware, political – are would-be pillars of contemporary urban progressiveness, but Mildenhall rips off the veneer of their self-satisfaction and shows the hypocrisy and self-absorption that lie beneath the oh-so-virtuous exterior. They are in mid-life, and considering their choices. Flick thinks,  

She always thought being with these people … was the place she fit best, the place where she was wholly herself. But as she watches them throwing around their words, and lofty ideas, she feels oddly detached. Is this what happens in your forties, she wonders, you feel like you no longer fit – with your oldest friends, even your partner?

She is remembering a recent afternoon when she slept with the husband of an old friend: one of their party. It has not been mentioned between them since, but is a roiling tension.

Marnie and Lou are married with kids. Marnie is running for office and her credentials to draw the progressive vote seem impeccable: engaged with the community, lesbian, mother. Lou’s constant references to ‘her wife’ are mildly irritating. We begin to see an artifice within each of them.

Josie is a botanist, passionate about regenerating the bush, beating back the noxious exotics that strangle it and striving to live more harmoniously. She has a private project in mind at the block. She has seen fungi growing that could yield vast commercial returns, but with potentially disastrous side-effects. She has secretly seeded a small plot at a distant edge of the property and is in early discussions with a private company that could subsidise the project, yet feels she has let down her friends by contemplating a partnership with a big corporate, betraying her ideals.

She tries to tell herself that if the co-cultivation works, if this is the spot to keep researching, there’ll be money to protect it … But her self-talk sounds hollow. There is no guarantee that a company like Entheon will stick to its sustainable and ethical mission statement any more than the thousand companies who have blatantly greenwashed their shareholders …

And Phil, the man’s man, wants to be the bloke who is not soft. He is part of the real world, like these country people. He is someone who will butcher a lamb for their dinner at the property. The kids need to know where their food comes from. The group is disturbed but acknowledges the truth of this. They will not be hypocrites. They’re not detached. The lamb is bleating and the kids crowd around, petting her, but meat does not come in plastic trays.

Phil claps his hands together. ‘Right then,’ he says, ‘we wanna clean cut at the throat, then we’re gonna hang her up by her hind legs and let her bleed before we skin her.’ He’s trying to remember Paddy’s instructions, make them sound more like an Ikea flat pack assembly guide and less like a snuff movie.

The scene is predictably awful.

At this point, there are few surprises. This group, full of urban smugness, will get their comeuppance. But Mildenhall takes some unexpected turns. Even as caricatures, with their recognisable traits, we feel sympathy for these characters. Though comfortable, they are not one-per-centers. They have stretched their resources to buy the place and their failures and struggles are ours, their aspirations, too. There is an unexpected generosity towards some squatters on their land. They love their kids and their passions are real.

Is this enough? When a new neighbour’s hostility ends in a violent confrontation, their outward respect for the environment, their rejection of violence, their responsibility, all their striving, is ultimately hollow virtue-signalling. Their horror is real, but so is their instinct for self-preservation over doing – or not doing – the right thing. They circle the wagons.

But the worst is to come. There is a creature that moves through the bush in the dark, a beast which has delivered a death blow to its foe but bears a gruesome crown. It is the squatters’ son, a young man, who sees the beast and its pain, and in the closing pages, Mildenhall brings us our children’s knowing contempt. Contempt for our mismanagement, our transgressions, our hypocrisy. Not benign, not weak, not passive, the children will cut us down. The consequences are horrific and will haunt you long after you put down these pages.

Kate Mildenhall The Hiding Place Simon and Schuster 2025 PB 320pp $34.99

Jessica Stewart is a freelance writer and editor. She can be found at www.yourseconddraft.com where she writes about editing, vagaries of the English language and books she’s loved.

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

You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.