The Albatross by Nina Wan, Picador
Primrose Li never intended to be at Whistles, the scrappy public golf course in a leafy Melbourne suburb where two decades earlier her future turned on the swing of a five-iron, but there’s no question, as the rain pelts down, she’s searching for something. Back then, in that moment, her first love evaporated, although the quiet, pragmatic Primrose is not in the habit of wallowing in nostalgia. “I guess I must’ve been 16 then,” she muses. “I think if I tried hard enough I would be able to remember more … why it came to be that we fell away from each other. But is there a point? My father has always told me the past has an expiration date.”
Primrose is a beguiling character – honest, troubled and dripping in restrained sensuality. She is the narrator of her own story, and as we get under her skin we realise Primrose is hurting. Author Nina Wan has given us a beautifully written, complex character study, at once spare and profound, and very soon we are smitten with Primrose.
She is the only child of Chinese immigrants who, as a child, served in the family cafe while hitting top grades in school. There, she meets Peter, and though they share similar ethnicity, he sees himself as more Australian than Asian.
When we first meet Primrose she is struggling, her husband,
