With my Review TBR pile teetering on the brink, I decided to call in a favour from Mr Gums, and handed him Lisa Kenway’s debut novel, All you took from me, thinking it might be up his alley.

Now, a word about Mr Gums. He is an engineer by training, and not the world’s biggest reader. When he does read – in the past at least – his go-to has been Jane Austen (whose books he has read multiple times, including more than once in German) and other classics. However, with more time at his disposal since retirement, he has started reading a little more broadly. He likes to be “entertained”, not overly challenged in his reading. (Apparently, reading Mansfield Park in German is not challenging!) Life is challenging enough, he says. So, crime fiction seemed to be a good fit, and he’s been trying out several authors with varying success. Chris Hammer is a big hit. Garry Disher goes down pretty well too. Peter Temple not so much. He has also read non-Australian crime writers – English, and others, including, recently, a Japanese author (thanks to JacquiWine). As you can tell from his Austen love, he is more than happy to read women writers, and has crime by Dervla McTiernan and Shelley Burr, and recently, Dinuka McKenzie’s first novel. So, why not Lisa Kenway?

So, Lisa Kenway. According to the media release that came with my review copy, she is an Australian writer and anaesthetist. This debut novel, All you took from me, was “inspired by her longstanding fascination with memory and consciousness”. An earlier manuscript version was longlisted for Hachette’s Richell Prize for Emerging Writers in 2020 (out of over 800 submissions). That must have given her confidence to keep working on it, because here it is, published by Transit Lounge in 2024.

Anyhow, the novel is set in two places – the Blue Mountains (which I love) and Sydney. The protagonist, Clare Carpenter, is an anaesthetist – write what you know! – whose husband has died in a single-vehicle car accident which also caused her to lose her memory. Soon after, she senses she is being followed by a stranger. Why? Finding the answer becomes her mission, but it is hampered by her loss of memory. Can she reverse that? Of course nothing is simple, and the risks and threats mount. This novel is not Mr Gums’ (nor my) preferred type of crime, which is the police procedural. It is, instead, as the blurbs say, a psychological thriller.

Mr Gums was intrigued by this debut, but he had reservations. He particularly liked the set up – the protagonist as anaesthetist. It was different, and an interesting idea. He enjoyed reading the technical details about anaesthesia, and liked the attention paid to details in those parts of the story. (Like me, he enjoys it when novels teach him about a world he doesn’t know much about.) However, this is also where his main reservation came, because, scientifically trained himself, he found Clare’s behaviour hard to believe. The risks she took, her foray into unscientific ideas, lost him. Mr Gums, though, has not been in the position Clare found herself in. Perhaps, in the same desperate circumstances, he might try anything too?

All you took from me is told first person, and the voice rings true. Clare is articulate and intelligent, and honest, as she starts to uncover less pleasant things about herself. The novel opens in the hospital a month after the accident, with Clare starting to return to her – new – consciousness. From here, the plot picks up, becoming increasing dramatic and sensational, as you’d expect for its genre, with Clare’s shaky memory, and her attempts to recover it, underpinning much of the intrigue. There are the usual red herrings and misleading threads, which kept Mr Gums challenged as he tried to work out what was true and what wasn’t.

Overall, Kenway’s novel is not Mr Gums’ preferred crime genre. He prefers more dogged analysis in his crime to the stress and tension of a thriller. However, he did conclude that All you took from me was “strangely entertaining”, which suggests to me that Kenway’s debut should not be the last novel she writes. I’d love to know if anyone else has read it?

Lisa Kenway
All you took from me
Melbourne: Transit Lounge, 2024
328pp.
ISBN: 9781923023123

[Review copy courtesy Transit Lounge (via Scott Eathorne of Quikmark Media)]