Smith adds to the unknowability of Benjamin’s character by frequently alternating between his full first name and the shortened nickname, often in Malti’s own thoughts; the usage of each is not explained, but it results in a sense of simultaneous familiarity and distance, not unlike what his daughters feel. The author alludes to his hypocrisies, or superficial engagement in issues – ‘he never bothered to go to the protest and rallies, but he loves a good folk song’. Benjamin is professionally competent, but in the domestic setting he fails, sometimes cartoonishly. Often, the Benjamin that the girls yearn for, and the Benjamin seen by the reader, are so different that they could be separate people.

Despite being the prism through which the three women view and come to understand themselves and one another, Benjamin is not the most interesting, or even important, character in this novel. Of particular importance to the women’s lives are the subtle nuances of race. Malti is far from her home and her children, mixed Fijian-Indian and white, have little knowledge of this part of their family history. As she gets older, Ellery develops an interest in Fiji, ‘a mystery to her and yet also somehow part of who she is’, while Verona’s connection to the country and culture remains non-existent, or at least simply a matter of genetics.

These racial tensions are key to the women’s experiences of life. At times, Smith illustrates them deftly: a scene between Malti and Benjamin when they visit Fiji shows that the Western husband sees only exoticism, ‘susceptible to the charm of strange new customs’; she snaps, eventually, ‘It’s my country.’ Stung, he doesn’t mention it again – but this small interaction symbolises the unbridgeable divide between them.

At other points, Smith employs banalities to communicate her point. Ellery’s differences from her peers become evident through the trope that has become known as the ‘lunchbox moment’ – that is, when a character of colour is ridiculed for bringing ‘weird’ ethnic food to school, highlighting their otherness. While this is a common experience for children of the diaspora, its repeated use across time has diluted its impact; it comes across instead as hackneyed shorthand.

Smith takes a more distinctive approach to culture through her interpretation of Fijian folklore, which is threaded through the narrative. She draws first on the story of Udre Udre, a cannibal who had hoped that by consuming the flesh of a thousand bodies he would achieve immortality; and then the tale of Kuttichathan, a mischievous, shape-shifting boy–god, not unlike a poltergeist. In Udre Udre, Malti sees something of herself, as her cultural identity is erased in the everyday business of living in so-called Australia; in the latter, Ellery sees hints of her father, whom she also compares to Peter Pan – a man more fixated on entertaining his children than actually caring for them. These myths float over the narrative like ghosts, as though the family’s fates are predetermined.

As they grow older, Ellery and Verona develop distinct, dialectical personalities. Their clashes with each other, and with Benjamin, provide windows into their mindsets. At times, their inner monologues, and even the dialogue between them, can be unbelievable – what kind of pre-teen thinks, participating in and observing a domestic scene, ‘it was all very nuclear’? Oddly, their relationships with Malti are the least explored in the novel, which feels like a missed opportunity; but the siblings are compelling foils to one another, especially when they eventually experience the same loss through different perspectives. The sisters must reckon with both unreliable memory and reality to uncover their own versions of an emotional truth – a process which, Smith suggests, is ongoing.

The novel is longer and more meandering than might be necessary, but its detours paint a holistic picture of the specificities of these lives, together and apart, and the ways in which family impacts the individual. Smith’s writing is lovely and lyrical, moving the story along at a leisurely pace, even when the emotions and scenarios described are tumultuous.

At the heart of it all is a yearning for belonging, whether it be to a place or a person. The three Fortune women form a triptych of intergenerational experience embodying the in-between existence of the diaspora, and the endless echoes of the past into the present and beyond.