Rose Vintage, Nunn better!

Paula Xiberras

Kayte Nunn is yet to make the journey to Tasmania although she assures me it is high on her list especially Wine Glass Bay, Cradle Mountain and the docks.

Kayte Nunn is an English girl who has made Australia home for the last twenty years. A magazine and book editor Kayte has now turned to writing her first novel ‘Rose Vintage’.

There is some ambiguity in the title that follows Rose’s work bringing both a crop to vintage at an Australian vineyard and reaching her own maturation after a failed relationship.

The book is divided into sections including; ones titled ‘pruning’, ‘first bud’, ‘blossom’ and ‘vintage’. These sections mapping the development of plants parallels the development of the love relationship in the book. For example, we have the beginning period which signals the end of an old relationship for the main protagonist, Rose, as she is’’ pruning’ or clearing away the old to bring in the new. The chapter ‘first bud’ with the beginning of a new relationship in the shape of the Kalkari Vineyard’s owner Mark who brings with him his own ‘blossoms’ in his two children as well a bit of an unexpected noxious exotic, in the form of his former wife Isabella, that threatens to stall the growth of the relationship as Rose and Mark work to achieve their own ‘vintage’.

Kayte tells me her desire to write came to her while she was attending boarding school as an 11 year old. The school library held a copy of ‘The Darling Buds of May’ which inspired her with its sense of community not unlike that which we see in Rose Vintage.

‘Rose Vintage’ is out now published by Nero.