Andrea Goldsmith’s The Buried Life explores the intertwined paths of three individuals. When Adrian, Laura and Kezi – three very different people at different stages of life – meet, their lives start to change. Adrian is a scholar of death, but at 43, he is lost and feels his life has stalled. He meets Kezi, a young artist whose life and identity have meant she has been shunned from her family – who are part of an evangelical church.
Then there’s 60-year-old Laura, a town planner who wants something more than her seemingly perfect marriage. What these three have in common are their responses to life and religion, to love and family, and the fact that they all want more than what they have. It is this desire for more that tugs at the fragile threads of their relationships to reveal secrets that should have stayed buried.
There’s something poignant about a story that revolves around three characters with different backgrounds, beliefs, understanding and experiences.
Each character has failed through the eyes of other people: Kezi is a failure to her family based on sexuality and choices. Laura’s husband has kept secrets from her their entire marriage and has ensured she’s beaten down emotionally; she hasn’t been the perfect wife he demands. And Adrian finds that there is joy in life after years of inertia.
Adrian and Laura become the parental figures Kezi’s life is missing and are there when her life takes an unexpected turn.
As the novel reaches its precipice, the three navigate what life and death mean to them, and the music and stories that have affected them. The stories that the characters tell each reveal everything the reader needs to know about them, showing that they have more depth than those around them believe.
Goldsmith untangles the divisions media and society create among the generations represented by her death expert, Jewish town planner and young lesbian. She has created a novel that teaches us what it means to truly accept someone for who they are.
The Buried Life is a very character-driven novel, which works for the plot and its extrapolation of humanity’s responses to life, death, trauma and realisations of how lives have been compromised – how people have had to curl in on themselves to be more agreeable to those that put them down. It gives characters like Laura the power to be who they really want to be without feeling confined.
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Each of these three characters has a strong voice, even as they are faced with adversities that once dictated – and in some ways – still dictate their lives. The Buried Life explores the layers of messy lives and complicated family relationships with care and tenderness, allowing readers to live, laugh and mourn with its characters.Â
The Buried Life, Andrea Goldsmith
Publisher: Transit Lounge
ISBN: 9781923023253
Format: Paperback
Pages: 328 pp
Release Date: 1 March 2025
RRP: $34.99
