After the Rain is Aisling Smith’s debut novel, and it amply demonstrates her ability to write well and create complex and likeable characters. Most of the book is from the perspective of Malti, a woman who came from Fiji to study law in Melbourne in 1975. Alone and homesick for the tropics and her Indian-Fijian parents, she puts energy into her studies and her career progresses quickly.

However, she feels dislocated from her homeland and family, and this feeling is understandably heightened during the multiple coups in Fiji.

The novel opens when Malti and her husband Ben move to a beachfront house. It is 1987; Malti is already a lawyer and Ben a linguistics professor. Ben says he is unable to take the day off work for the move, and this is the reader’s first indication that all is not well.

Malti misses clues about her marriage to Ben that are evident to the reader. He is unreliable: he comes home late, needs to work on weekends and also late at night. She can’t reach him at his office. He never calls to say he’ll be late and he goes on multiple ‘field trips’.

By the time the marriage ends, the couple have two daughters, Ellery and Verona. Ben lives in Brisbane and promises to ring and visit, but hardly does. As the girls get older, Ben visits twice a year. When he is with them, he is an active and energetic father. He doesn’t keep the rules and routines that Malti insists on and he organises activities every day.

It’s then the novel switches to the viewpoint of each daughter. Ellery, the older girl, begins to recognise her father’s false promises. Verona is still captivated by his spirit of adventure, and happy to overlook his faults. This drives a wedge not only between Ellery and her father, but also between the sisters.

This is a novel about marriage, family dynamics and the attempt to live between two cultures and lands. I highly recommend it.