Truths I Never Told You is the eleventh novel by best-selling Australian author, Kelly Rimmer. Bethany Evans and her siblings have accepted that their father needs to go into care: living alone with heart failure and dementia is a recipe for disaster. Despite (or perhaps because of) having five-month-old Noah to care for, Beth volunteers to sort out Patrick Walsh’s house while they decide what to do with it.

When they get the attic unlocked, it’s quite the opposite of the scrupulously neat house their father kept. What intrigues Beth most, though, is a series of ever-darkening paintings that seem to be somehow related to yellowed, hand-written notes spread throughout the mess. Beth soon realises the notes are written by Grace, the mother she barely knew, the mother who died in a car accident when she was just a toddler. Or did she? The notes seem to indicate quite a different end for Grace Walsh.

The story is told by multiple narrators alternating between two clearly-marked time periods. Forty years apart, they illustrate the great divide over that time in social attitudes on certain issues like abortion, contraception and women’s rights, while also demonstrating that mindsets about others, like mental illness and the stigma attached to it, have changed very little.

It may seem that Rimmer initially rather labours the point on Post-Natal Depression, but it does allow her to paint a clear and vivid picture of how it affects those women afflicted by this debilitating condition. The feelings of shame and inadequacy, the disconnect with baby, the lack of insight into the condition are all graphically depicted. Rimmer also touches on the plasticity of early memories and the decisions faced by the family of those with dementia. A moving and thought-provoking read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Hachette Australia.