If you like Tim Winton, you'll like thisAnd I don't like Tim Winton
There were positives :
voice of the young boy through whom the story is told is well done;
the sense of place, a rather bleak Tasmania, was well done;
the unfolding of their blighted lives is well done;
the characterisation is well done;
the descriptions of the sea are well done;
well done, it's Australian ... but, so what!!
But it just didn't do it for me.
It didn't draw me in. I am not sure if the twist, the emerging memory, was meant to be so obvious. And I am not sure what the role of the reclusive neighbour was. The ominous sense of violence was a little unrelenting. The lyricism of the language lead nowhere - yes, some poetic passages, finely polished, but I found it all tedious in the long run.
Longlisted for 2012 Miles Franklin Award
First Tuesday Book Club
