I didn’t get along with this novel.

I need to take some of the blame here. There’s an understated lyricism to the prose, punctuated by moments of intense drama, which requires you to pay attention. I wasn’t in a “pay attention” mood, and, as such, there were numerous times when I had to go back to the start of the paragraph to rediscover the narrative thread. But I had other issues with the novel, which go beyond my goldfish attention span, which I’ll get to.

Following lockdown in Melbourne, Till moves to the remote town of Wirowie in South Australia, where she moves into an abandoned railway station with her dog Birdy. We learn that when Till was five, she witnessed the abduction of her best friend, E. It’s a trauma she’s never truly recovered from. But now, two decades later, the women of Wirowie are being assaulted, a series of disturbing events that trigger dark memories for Till.

What Treloar does very well is capture what it was like in Melbourne during lockdown. She also handles Till’s mental anguish with sensitivity and compassion. I also loved that when Till reaches Wirowie, only one person, Bev, treats her rudely — and she has her reasons — everyone else in the town puts an arm around Till, even if they don’t know her story. It’s a sympathetic subversion of the “stranger comes to town” trope.

But the plot is where I have quibbles. It stops and starts as if Treloar doesn’t have her heart in it. Treloar is more interested in exploring Till and Wirowie’s past — both steeped in trauma (for Wirowie, it’s the decimation of First Nations people by European settlers exploring remote parts of the country during the mid-18th Century). These are weighty themes deserving of discussion. But it means that when the suspense elements kick in, they lack the same depth, not helped by several choices Treloar makes that pushed against my willing suspension of disbelief. 

In a better mood, I might have liked this novel more, might have appreciated the quiet subtlety of the prose.