Take two love stories, one good, old-fashioned Fitzroy pub, some magical realism, and mix it all up with Melbourne’s booming years of the 1910s, and you have one of the most compelling and wonderfully bonkers novels of the year. Jock Serong’s latest book is, on one level, a classic ghost story, and, on another, a deeply human tale of yearnings, legacy and what being found feels like. This is not like his other novels, yet it is still a carefully researched and orchestrated story.

In 1993, Martha, a lawyer with great ‘chutzpah’, buys a bottle of wine from a pub called The Cherrywood and falls for the bartender serving her. She wants to follow up, but the pub has changed location. Thomas, an industrialist, builds a paddle-steamer from cherry wood in Melbourne in the late 1910s. He has big plans for its success. His wife and daughter travel from Scotland to join him as the boat makes its maiden voyage. How these two stories connect is the basis of this wonderful novel. Told with exact historical notes and with many references to Melbourne as we know it, the plot takes you on a wild ride.

Readers who allow themselves to fall into the grace of Serong’s writing will delight in this novel. Those readers who understand that not everything we see is true will likely fancy for themselves a pint or two at The Cherrywood. Fans of Evie Wyld or Robbie Arnott should consider this novel as their next read. It is a glorious reconsideration of karma, of how the past is always with us, and why love can accommodate great change. I was utterly charmed by this rather astonishing view of Melbourne.