Description
Title: Iluka
Author: Stroud, Cassie
Format: Trade Paperback C Format
Publication date: 28/01/2026
Imprint: HQ
ISBN: 9781038933652
‘Knife sharp perception … fiction that is an absolute pleasure to read,’ Emily Maguire, author
This vivid, engrossing, beautifully crafted family drama from an exciting debut author charts the hurtful messes, complicated relationships and profound loves of three siblings.
After their grandfather’s death, siblings Helen, Sylvie and Brendan, and Helen’s daughter, film student Tig, are gathered together at Iluka, a typical fibro beach house in a small town on the south coast. Iluka is the house they grew up in when their troubled mother ran away to the bright lights of the city, leaving their grandparents to raise them.
As they slowly clear the house for sale and relive various memories, they find a bundle of letters addressed to each of them from their missing mother, Marguerite, that were sent long after they’d been told she died.
Their world shifts on its axis, as the siblings begin to question everything they have been told. Why did their grandmother hide these letters? Was their grandfather complicit? And could the mother they thought they had lost still be alive?
Viewed through the unsparing eye of Tig’s camera, we watch a family first implode then reform around a new reality, a reality that brings with it profound change in the way they view themselves and each other.
Hedley’s Books –
Siblings Helen, Sylvie and Brendan gather to pack up their grandparents’ home Iluka, their significant childhood home after their mother walked from their lives. But when secrets are revealed, they need to turn and unpack their own lives and what they were led to believe. Was their mother’s disappearance so straightforward? Bewildered as children they adjusted to life without their mother, but now here they are as adults confronting their history – all in very different ways.
Debut author Cassie Stroud seamlessly provides extra chapters featuring Grandmother Iris and Mother Marguerite and this pulls back the layers, providing context and a fresh set of eyes for the reader. This brings more understanding and empathy to the cast of characters. Iluka starts with the complexities of sibling relationships but ends with a deeper awareness of generational clashes between mother, daughter then grandchildren. Set with a backdrop of significant social changes from the 60s, 80s and present day – the changing social culture provides the spine to this tale to ponder about decisions made by Iris that affected her daughter. Would Marguerite have carved a different life, and can the siblings bridge a divide? A powerful family-centric debut for book clubs.
– Reviewed by Sue Reid