Review: A HOUSE BUILT ON SAND

A HOUSE BUILT ON SAND by Tina Shaw (Text Publishing, 2024)

Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

Maxine has been losing things lately. Her car in the shopping centre carpark. Important work files—and her job as a result. Her marbles? ‘Mild cognitive impairment’, according to the doctor. Time for a nursing home, according to her daughter, Rose.

Rose has her own troubles with a recurring vision of a locked cupboard, claustrophobic panic. Something in the shadows. Something to do with the old family house in Kutarere.

Back in that house by the beach, Maxine and Rose try to find their bearings. But they can’t move forward without dealing with the past—and the past has a few more surprises in store.

The idea of losing things being a precursor to something more sinister is one of those noises lurking at the back of many minds of a "certain age". On the one hand we're always told that forgetting names, losing your keys, forgetting where the car was parked - it's all part of life busy noise. You get it when you're juggling too many things in too small a space of time with not enough sleep because along with that forgetfulness come the aches, pains and niggles. Did I mention dropping things? Am I projecting here? Quite possibly, but A HOUSE BUILT ON SAND was a memorable reading experience because of so many things it's hard to know where to start.

When Maxine's doctor diagnosed 'mild cognitive impairment', he probably should have included a diagnosis for her daughter Rose, who is on edge and suffering some form of PTSD right from the start of this novel. Which means, despite her doctor's explicit instructions not to drive, when Maxine heads out to drive from Auckland to the family bach at Kutarere, she causes panic and resentment. She's hoping that whatever it is that's really important about going there will come to her when she arrives, but a near miss with a truck and a crash into a ditch mean that Rose is called and she could really. Live. Without. The four-hour-drive to collect Maxine. This is not the first drop everything and run episode with Maxine and Rose is annoyed, Rose's husband is tetchy and Maxine doesn't seem to care.

Once Rose gets there though, the idea of an extra night at the house, where there are so many happy memories, seems like a good idea. And then the reader starts to discover just what a car crash Rose's own life has become, even without her mother's dramas. Infertility challenges and a less than invested partner, a job as an early childhood educator adding to the sense of personal failure, to say nothing of the strain of working with other people's children in general. Claustrophobia, and a therapist that can treat her over the phone, at the location of the worst of her childhood triggering memories seems like a good plan, as does the chance to find some way of reconnection with her mother. But Maxine is dealing with her own stirred memories - not all of them good, and there's something, in particular that's worrying her, making her feel guilty and stressed. 

A HOUSE BUILT ON SAND is a interesting approach to what is a very convincing portrayal of somebody's slip into dementia. Giving that the twist of a mystery to be solved seems to reflect the way that life goes - for the sufferer and their families, little mysteries of what / why and when being solved on a regular basis, but this time, with something bigger behind it. It seems that the author of this work has some personal experience of parts of this scenario and the narrative reads as both convincing and sympathetic but realistic, warts and all with humour and sadness, and past and present, leading inexorably to a future that needs some getting used to.

Karen Chisholm is one of Australia's leading crime reviewers. She created Aust Crime Fiction in 2006, a terrific resource - please check it out. Karen also reviews for Newtown Review of Books, and has been a regular judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and Ngaio Marsh Awards. This review was first published on Karen's website; she kindly shares some of her reviews of crime and thriller novels written by New Zealanders adn Australians on Crime Watch as well as on Aust Crime Fiction.