In Footscray, 1933, Lil Martin watches as women around her endure poverty, violence and loss, and wonders if anything will ever change. When she invites her neighbour’s daughter, Peggy, into her house as a boarder, Lil is unknowingly beginning a friendship that will have a ripple effect far into the future. Years later, in 2020, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Hilda struggles to retain control of her memories and her dignity in the agonising isolation of assisted living. In 2031, La reluctantly takes a job at an Amazon-esque warehouse, lured by the promise of a regular income and an attractive health and wellbeing package. Later still, in the unknown future of 2181, sisters Onyx and Maz search for precious treasures in the remnants of our shattered civilisation.
If this sounds like a lot, it is. These are just three of the six narrative strands that Kate Mildenhall expertly weaves together in her third novel, The Hummingbird Effect. It feels lazy to call this sort of work ambitious, but there is incredible ambition in the way that Mildenhall exerts herself as a writer with each new book. She’s a writer who seems reluctant to settle, moving from historical fiction in her debut Skylarking, to the more commercial feminist thriller The Mother Fault, and now this genre-defying novel that spans more than two centuries and still manages to be easily enjoyable. The concerns of all three novels point to a deeply focused mind concerned with one question: what will it take to save us from ourselves?
