In her ninth novel, The Buried Life, Andrea Goldsmith explores ambitious themes of death, denial and uncertainty. She examines the illusion of emotional security among the educated middle classes of inner-city Melbourne. Familial dysfunction and destructive relationships define the intersecting lives of Adrian, Laura and Kezi, as each struggles with the anxiety of the unfamiliar.
These are grand topics, but Goldsmith treats them with grace rather than high drama. She employs an emotional, rather than a political lens for her universal concerns, investigating the fear of death as a fear of the unknown, and she shows how this fear can prevent the necessary rupture of change. Hence the title of the book, which is taken from a poem of the same name by Matthew Arnold.
