58 pages • 1 hour read
Sally HepworthThe Soulmate: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Genre and Authorial Context: Domestic Suspense and Sally Hepworth
Sally Hepworth has become one of the most popular domestic suspense authors. Hepworth wrote her first novel, Love Like the French, while on parental leave with her first child. It was first published in German as Wenn du an meiner Seite bist in 2014. While pregnant with her second child, Hepworth wrote her second novel, The Secrets of Midwives, published in the US in 2015. This first brought her work to an English-speaking audience.
Hepworth’s work belongs to a subgenre of psychological thrillers known as “domestic suspense.” Domestic suspense has made its way into the mainstream market through novels such as Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl in 2012 and Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train in 2015. Domestic suspense situates the conventions of the psychological thriller in the domestic sphere, with female protagonists that are professionals, mothers, and wives. In her novels, Hepworth utilizes her own experience with family and parenthood to both establish context and drive the action of her thrillers. Domestic suspense draws on crime fiction conventions, including a dark tone, surprising plot twists, and secretive, complex characters. As such, it relies on a juxtaposition of the mundane and familiar with the suspense and mystery elements of the thriller genre.
Geographical Context: Portsea
Hepworth’s more recent novels, The Family Next Door (2018) and The Mother-in-Law (2019), are set in her hometown of Melbourne, Australia. This is also true of The Soulmate. Her local knowledge of the area adds new layers of detail that are especially important in The Soulmate, which is set in an affluent beachside community near Melbourne. Because of her understanding of the area, Hepworth is able to build tension into the novel that deepens thematic meaning as well as increasing the suspense that is so fundamental to the psychological thriller genre.
Portsea, the novel’s primary location, is a real area outside Melbourne. Hepworth describes it as “a sleepy coastal town […] at the very tip of Mornington Peninsula” (3). The novel shows that the Gerards are only able to afford their home because “it [i]s a ramshackle cottage rather than one of the sandstone mansions that flank[s] it” (3). Pippa’s experience in Portsea reflects the real-life community, known as “Millionaire’s walk […] for both its million-dollar views and the multimillion-dollar homes that line this part of the cliff” (2). Portsea’s exclusivity is driven by scarcity—the small finger of land offers limited opportunities for development, which also means that the beaches are often uncrowded and calm. Hepworth’s use of these real-life settings and socio-economic undercurrents underpins the book’s exploration of ambition, motivation, and aspiration. The choice of location also adds glamor, detail, and the excitement of recognition for those who live in or visit the area.
The Drop in the novel may be based on a similar real-life place, known as The Gap, in Sydney, Australia, “a rocky cliff at the entrance to Sydney Harbour” that has attracted attention as a place where people end their own lives (Gelineau, Kristen. “Australian ‘Angel’ Saves Lives at Suicide Spot.” CBS News, 14 Jun. 2010). At The Gap, a local man named Don Ritchie became known as the “Angel of the Gap,” saving around 160 people from dying by suicide. In The Soulmate, Gabe earns the moniker of “angel” after saving seven people from dying by suicide at The Drop, echoing Ritchie’s famous actions.
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