The Olive Sisters - Amanda Hampson

Set in Australia, The Olive Sisters intertwines two stories - the contemporary journey of Adrienne, a Sydney marketer at odds with her college-aged daughter and trying to recover from a bankruptcy which has cost her her beloved home; and the stories of her parents, Australian Jack and Italian migrant Isabelle, and her younger sister Rosanna.
Told in the first person, we learn that Adrienne, a true city woman, has flown to the country town where her first-generation immigrant father built a farm, the town where her distant mother grew up. Adrienne never felt loved by her mother, and was abandoned by her father. It's too late now, to make peace, as both her parents are dead. And despite herself, Adrienne seems to be doing no better with her own daughter, Lauren. But perhaps spending time where her grandfather, and then her father, lived will heal something long ago broken. Adrienne is astonished to discover that her mother had a younger sister, Rosanna - she recalls how often her mother seemed to be looking for someone, would sometimes freeze when catching sight of an always female profile. Why was her existence a secret?
Some of the riddles of Adrienne's past are revealed through the alternating chapters, which discuss (in the third person) Isabelle and Rosa Martino, the 'olive sisters' (so named because their father, Franco, planted some of the first olive trees in New South Wales, long before today's multicultural society), the story of Jack, and of how he came to meet them and to marry Isabelle.
I was frequently reminded of Wally Lamb's I Know This Much is True while reading The Olive Sisters - I think more because of the narrative style (multigenerational, interwoven stories) and some similar themes (sibling responsibility, Italian immigration and assimilation, hidden family secrets - as opposed to unhidden family secrets, I suppose! Duh!) than writing style or plot.
The Olive Sisters is certainly less intricate and significantly shorter that IKTMIT, and I'm not sure that I learned anything significant from the experience of reading it. I found The Olive Sisters to be a gentle, alright story, well-crafted and not terrible, but not a great or profound work either. - Alex