LOVE OBJECTS by Emily Maguire

Love Objects by Emily Maguire was published in 2021 , the seventh novel by the celebrated Australian author. The story revolves around a family who are facing a range of challenges and how each of their personal situations impacts their ability to support each other’s difficulties.

Lena is a young woman at University who has a standard lunch date with her Aunty Nic, until one Sunday Nic doesn’t show up. Lena finds Nic on the floor of her room, having had a nasty fall.

What Lena discovers when finding Nic is that Nic is unwell, suffering from a disorder which causes her to hoard. Nic’s home is full of items that Nic has either bought or salvaged over years, creating an unsafe environment for her physically and emotionally.

What Nic doesn’t know is that Lena is harbouring her own secret, one that threatens to destroy her life.

Amongst these characters is Will, Lena’s brother who is trying (without a lot of success) to build himself a life after serving prison time. Their lives have been seriously derailed by the death of their father years earlier and their mother’s remarriage. All of these things interplay to bring each character to the story at hand.

I would be lying if I said I loved this novel, but equally I did not hate it either. At times, I found myself loathe to pick it up and continue reading. However, there was enough curiosity to see where Maguire would take these characters to do so.

I struggled with Lena’s character, to be honest. I wasn’t angry with her choices - we’ve all been young - but there were choices she made which made little sense to me at times. I thought there were times where the way she treated Will was pretty ordinary and, while I understood her choices surrounding Nic’s hoarding, I also felt like she was really disrespectful to that character. It made it hard for me to empathise with her, which is problematic for the main character.

I know Maguire is a highly respected author and I am not saying I wouldn’t read any of her other books, but I am not sure I’d rush to them, based on Love Objects. I guess I want stories where there are characters I want to root for, even if they’re flawed. I also felt the story was somewhat unfinished - there were some loose ends I felt were left hanging, which I can find frustrating.

Has anyone else read this? What did you think?