- Gail Jones' new novel is confronting on many levels. She writes in highly poetic prose, frequently using strange and unusual words. ‘Everything claimed a greater propinquity’; ‘This disinhibition, this voluptuary of movement’. It's verbal congestion at times, but rich and provocative as well.
- The principal focus of the novel is the fragility of relationships. Marriages are difficult. Friendships are more lasting, substantial and necessary, and occasional connections essential.
- The other focus is the isolated outback town of Broken Hill, formerly a thriving mining town for silver, lead and zinc, but now ghostly, reflecting the dead heart of Australia. I grew up in Broken Hill and my father worked in the mines. I know it well. It had a population of 34,000 then. Now it has only half that, and many houses, halls, schools and churches are abandoned and decaying.
- Jones reflects the whole dark experience in a crime story that fascinates the nation. An Unknown Woman, called 'Jane', was found on an isolated road near the town. There's evidence she’s been subject to strangulation, and has recently given birth. She's also severely malnourished. Although still alive she stares at nothing.
- Freelance journalist Angie is engrossed by the story as she watches it on TV in Sydney. Detective Beverly Calder is her friend and has been sent to Broken Hill to investigate.
- Angie's husband is Sam and their relationship is suffering complications. They have no kids and her mother Nora is ordinary. She feels a ‘general sense of incompletion and thwarted love…there was respect here, in this marriage, but also heartache and suppression’. ‘Mundanity’ is the word, a 'failure wholly to connect…this turning away - this is what their marriage had become’. ‘Their conjugal irritation was mutual…His automatic authority. The air of amused lack of interest when she expressed an opinion’.
- She talks to people about Jane’s death, and word spreads on social media. A range of people call and text her claiming they know who Jane is - a missing sister, a missing twin, a missing friend, a missing daughter, a missing lover. Most of them are sad, others are whackos.
- She travels by train to Broken Hill. She describes the place very accurately, including its streets named after minerals and chemicals. ‘There was a kind of emptiness to the streets, and an inertia that they couldn’t quite explain’.
- There are small and abandoned mines in the area surrounding the town, particularly surrounding the tiny, mainly abandoned, town of Silverton, a half hour's drive north. There's a small museum there which helps Angie in her quest to uncover what happened to Jane.
- The story's resolution is very satisfying and meaningful. We are left with death but also with life, hope and community.
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