Reunion is not always about redemption

CLARE Leslie Hall's The Days You Were Mine, first published as Mine before being reissued after the success of Broken Country, centres on a question that sounds simple but rarely is: what does it mean to meet your birth mother when you are no longer a child, but a parent yourself.

- LIESL VAN DER SCHYFF

Luke is 27, married, financially stable, and about to become a father. He has always known he was adopted, and for most of his life that knowledge has sat quietly in the background. It is the birth of his son Samuel that unsettles him.

Becoming a father makes Luke more curious and, importantly, more insecure. Hall portrays this motivation effectively. Luke's choice to find his birth mother feels real and not forced for the story.

When he traces Alice, the reunion is subdued and uneasy, no grand catharsis. Instead there are cautious conversations and small gestures that feel rehearsed.