- Anja works for an antiques auction house. She’s a bright, spiky, perceptive, confident, recently divorced, thirty-one year old. And she just knows her opinions are right. To top it off she can’t handle small talk. What a package! She returns to work after a month's holiday with her husband in Greece on the island of Hydra, during which he deserts her. After two years he's had enough of her relentless fixations.
- She was raised by a single mother who had a strange obsession with buying new houses and apartments to live in. They were essentially rootless. Her father, Edmond, moved back to Denmark when she was two. He'd also had enough.
- During a deceased estate assessment she discovers a priceless antique chair, but the old mother doesn’t want to sell it. She sits on it, refusing to budge. Anja pushes her off and grabs it anyway, damaging the lady's coccyx in the process.
- She’s fired from work for harassment of an unnamed staff member. ‘You’re too volatile’ says her boss. Typically for powder kegs like Anja the ordinary will bring them down. She reflects at one point: 'she has a propensity for flirtation with annihilation’. She relocates from Melbourne to an old heritage-listed shack on a naval base on the coast.
- Interspersed throughout Anja's story is another one set thirty years or so earlier. In 1985 Navy Lieutenant Brendan Quartermain is conducting an official investigation into a possible savage animal on the base or perhaps a voracious feral fox. The locals refer to it as 'Anaba'. It's become local folklore, but the lieutenant is sceptical. When one has been cut adrift and there is nobody left to confide in, it’s easy for the imagination to go feral, especially if one is already prone to such thinking.
- Anja lands a casual administrative job in an antiques compound, and she's good at it. But she seems to be becoming increasingly deranged. She often calls and harasses an unknown person from a derelict telephone booth. And she hears roars and screams at night.
- The rich tapestry of this novel may for a long time bewilder you, no matter how many times you re-read particular paragraphs. Patience is required but rest assured it will pay off. It all slowly comes together in a powerful, immensely satisfying way.
-The cover, by the way, is simply magnificent: a beautiful young woman with her arms up fending off reality and exposure, keeping her distance. Perfect.
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