Tag Archives: australian authors

Book Review: Exiles by Jane Harper

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I always look forward to Jane Harper’s books and have read them all. Exiles is also the third and last in the Aaron Falk series, so I was keen to read this one.

 A baby is found lying peacefully in her pram at a rural festival but there is no sign of the mother.  Yes, this hooked me immediately.

It’s a year later when we meet Aaron who arrives in the deep wine country of South Australia to attend the christening of his godchild. It also happens to be the twelve-month anniversary since the baby’s mother, Kim Gillespie disappeared and Aaron is drawn into the appeal for information at the very same food and wine festival where she disappeared. Kim Gillespie’s shoe was found in a reservoir and there is speculation about whether it’s suicide, murder or a merely an accident. Aaron becomes engrossed in her close-knit family and friends and he begins to wonder what secrets they’re hiding.

I loved the setting, the wine, the vines and could well envisage the landscape. Harper certainly knows how to paint a picture.

However, I did find the first half quite slow because it was an information dump of backstory and for the life of me, I wondered why she started the story twelve months later. After all, Falk was actually at the festival when Kim disappeared. The time gap added no value that I could see. I really wanted to be in the action from the start not hear about it.

By the time the novel ramped up half way through I was losing interest. There I’ve said it. There was a lot of characters to keep track of and care or not care about. But I persisted to the very satisfactory end. The police work seemed to plod and Falk appeared to be more of a bystander along for the ride. The side plot of his romance dominated more than his interest in the case. But then he’s on leave and why should he care about something that happened a year earlier? His motivation to investigate laboured until finally we got to see his internal musings and questioning of people and events. On the plus side, his romantic life showed more of his vulnerability and his own internal conflicts which I enjoyed.

Not her best but for many, it will be enough.

Book Review: Clarke by Holly Throsby

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This is about the mysterious disappearance of a woman. Or is it?

Set in 1991, police arrive at Barney’s rental house to dig up the backyard looking for Ginny Lawson who has been missing for six years. Next door lives Leonie who was a close friend of Ginny’s and who eagerly awaits justice for her friend. She’d never liked Ginny’s brute of a husband who has already sold up and moved away and is married to someone else in QLD. Barney and Leonie as well as a number of neighbours are keenly watching proceedings hoping for a resolution.

This novel is much more than about the disappearance of Ginny. It’s also a study of people, their relationships and central to that is loss and grief.

Alternating between Barney’s and Leonie’s point of view, Throsby gently draws out their characters revealing who these two people are. Leonie cares for four-year old Joe who keeps asking for his mother. Barney parks outside of McDonalds to glimpse his estranged son who works there. Leonie was a good friend to Ginny lamenting how the police had ignored her initial concerns about her friend’s disappearance and Ginny’s brutish husband.

Throsby goads us into making assumptions about these two characters nudging us to think one thing then slowly revealing their backstories. I did however guess the connection quite early between the two.

It’s a slow-moving story, gently threading the everyday mundane of surviving loss, dealing with grief and attempting to move on. Much like unwrapping a many layered parcel wrapped, each one makes you love and feel for the characters understanding them until we are left with nothing but hope at the end.

“Leonie rinsed her tea mug and set it on the drying rack. She went back to the table and collected Joe’s milky bowl, ‘Uptown Girl’ was coming softly out of the radio.

‘I want to see my mum.’

‘Sweetheart,’ said Leonie, holding the bowl.”

The town of Clarke, populated with 13000 people is just big enough to have all the usual amenities, even a shopping plaza, the description of which is so well portrayed that I could visualise the bleakness of the 1991 recession.

The end is very neatly tied together, perhaps a little too coincidental, but this one is an engaging read and I loved the characters more than anything else. Beautifully written, it’s a very compelling read. Pick this one up when you can.

Book Review: Stone Town by Margaret Hickey

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Stone Town is a fast-paced rural crime drama. Three teenagers discover the body of a property developer in the middle of a paddock in an area once known for its gold.

Senior Sergeant Mark Ariti, recently posted back to his home town after nursing his dying mother. Recently bereaved and divorced, he is hoping for a quite life but the murder and disappearance of another policewoman Detective Sergeant Natalie Whitsted, prompts the arrival of two detectives and complicates his life.  

There are a lot of characters in this novel but it easy to keep track of them – the women of the CWA, the detectives, Mark’s ex-work partner, his children, the teenagers and many, many others. The landscape is constantly wet and the author does a brilliant job of portraying the bleakness of the rain as well as the rural community. As Mark get sot know the community he also learns how highly regarded and involved his own mother was.

The novel is certainly page-turning and I finished it quickly compelled to know what happened. The end wasn’t entirely surprising as clues were dropped particularly in the last quarter of the book.

This is a second novel with Mark Ariti, the authors first was Cutters End and there are references of this throughout the book. Not having read it, I’m not sure if that would have helped. I certainly thought the character of Mark was well portrayed and there were no gaps for me. After reading this book, I would read Cutters End.

Overall, a very enjoyable read and it would be a great one to read over the holiday season.

Book Review: Infinite Splendours by Sophie Laguna

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This novel is a heart-breaking and difficult one to read given the subject matter.

Set in the fifties, a mother lives alone with her two sons, Lawrence who is ten and Paul, eight. They live in a small Victorian town and Lawrence is a bright young student while Paul is sporty. When their long-lost uncle comes to visit, their mother brightens up and this stranger introduces vitality to their world. However, things change quickly when the uncle sexually abuses young Lawrence, changing his life forever.

Laguna takes us on a journey through Lawrence’s life which becomes crippled and stagnant following the abuse. He develops an horrific stutter and so is prevented from communicating into his adulthood. He is treated as mentally disabled because of the stutter and his withdrawal from his brother and everyone around him, sends no real alarm bells.

The only light for Lawrence is his artwork which becomes his lifeline as an isolated and shunned adult. He lives for it but he again is ostracised by everyone around him except for his brother Paul who is frustrated yet still cares and looks out for him.

Laguna’s writing is wonderful as always and I will always read anything she writes. However this novel is a tough read, uncomfortable and tragic. It’s not for everyone.

Book Review: Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down

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I always like reading a Miles Franklin winner and this one recently won this prestigious prize.

The novel begins with the narrator opening a Facebook message from a man called Tony who is wondering if she is Maggie from his childhood foster home. The message leads Maggie to reflect on her old life and she takes us down a heart-breaking and tragic past. Her mother died from an overdose and her father was is in jail for murder by the time she reaches five. From then she is shunted from foster home to foster home, encountering abuse, drugs and institutional neglect.

This is a tough story to read and it makes you wonder how much trauma and tragedy a person can endure. For some, this will be a very difficult story to get through. Yet the writing compels you to keep reading, to turn the page with the desperate hope for something better for little Maggie. And whilst there is at times despair, there is also hope as she claws her way to people who do care and love her unconditionally. The scenes with her last foster mum are heart-warming and gratifying as is her early life with her husband and his family. But of course, nothing lasts for too long as events take a twist forcing her to make difficult choices.

The foster care system is fully scrutinised and its failings highlighted for debate in the wider community. Down shines a light on how institutionalisation affects a child’s, education, sense of belonging and self, demonstrated when Maggie finds she has no history – no photos, scant background on her family and little record of where she’s been.

Set in various parts of Melbourne and Phillip Island it’s always gratifying to read about my own backyard and the author has been meticulous in her research given that the time periods of which she writes have not been directly experienced by her.

It’s a fascinating novel, highlighting important themes, yet the last third for me seemed to drag a little. Perhaps the trauma of her life was just a little bit too much for me. However, I was compelled by Maggie, her resilience and her perseverance for the life she wanted and eventually got.

Book Review: Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au

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Winner of The Novel Prize in 2021, this story is about a daughter and her mother’s holiday through Japan. They visit galleries and museums, eat at restaurants and generally act as tourists do.

This is a short novel of only ninety-nine pages and the narrative is filled with the daughter’s observations of art, or literature, her family or her mother. We get little sense of the mother’s thoughts or feelings and she comes across as reserved with little personality. Their relationship seems strained with a portrayal of detachment across a cultural divide.

The narrator makes the following observation to her mother. “Maybe it’s good, I said, to stop sometimes and reflect upon the things that have happened, maybe thinking about sadness can actually end up making you happy.”  Yet we are given nothing about the mother’s response which left me a little frustrated.

There is a lot of minute detail some of which leaves little to the imagination for the reader. This together with the ‘tell’ nature of the prose served to take me out of the story, giving me nothing to feel or even at times to care about the daughter or the mother.

Almost like a travelogue of observations and although nicely written, I found this one difficult to engage with. I’m glad it was a short one.

Book Review: Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy

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This is another beautiful story following McConaghy’s first novel, Migration.  Along similar lines, this book explores climate change and the deteriorating world environment.

Inti Flynn and her twin sister Aggie arrive in Scotland. Inti leads a team of people who are tasked with introducing a group of wolves into the wilderness, commonly known as rewilding.  Inti and her team must deal with antagonism and suspicion from the locals some of whom still retain centuries old superstition about wolves. Despite that, she leads her team with grit and determination. When a sheep and then a man dies, the wolves are blamed and Inti makes an ill-fated decision which creates disastrous consequences to protect the animals.

The wolves are indeed the central characters. The rewilding process is a fascinating idea and has actually been introduced in Scotland in 2021. Land has been overrun by deer and farming. By introducing wolves as predators, the deer move on allowing the ecosystem to rebuild.

“if we can extend woodland cover by a hundred thousand hectares by 2026 then we could dramatically reduce CO2 emissions that contribute to climate change and we could provide habitats for native species.”

I really enjoyed the author’s exploration of this idea and it made me read further. It was successfully done in Yellowstone National Park and rewilding has begun to take shape in many countries across the world providing new hope.

But this story is much more than about wolves. The backstory of the sisters is emotional. Where Inti is ferocious and passionate, Aggie is silent and the trauma behind that is quite shocking. We learn also that Inti has the rare condition known as mirror-touch synthesia where she feels the pain of others.

The writing as always is beautiful and the descriptions of place so vivid, I could feel the bleakness and the cold. The sub-plots covered a lot of territory from domestic violence, to twin behaviour, animal bonding, community ignorance, trauma and mental illness. Without giving away spoilers, some of this could have been pared back as there was a lot to deal with as a reader. Was Duncan’s backstory just a bit too much?  It became quite complex yet wrapped up very neatly at the end, just a little too conveniently.  And while I appreciated what the author tried to do, there were some things that seemed to move towards the edge of implausibility.

But despite all that I really did enjoy it and the messages still remain important. Give this one a go.