Evie Wyld

Ex-pat Australian Hannah has travelled thousands of miles to escape her family and the secrets they hide but when her boyfriend dies unexpectedly, grief forces Hannah to remember the cycles of trauma. Max cannot escape the flat he stayed in with Hannah and he wants to protect her still but he has no corporeal being so he tries to help her confront her past.
This is a very beautiful love story that is hidden under layers of history. I love Wylde's writing, it is dreamy and ethereal even when describing quite unpleasant things. The life of the 'bogan' family is pitched just right, confronting racism, abuse and violence in the bush without being graphic - the reader has to fill in the gaps.… (more)

At some point too long ago for me to remember the details I must have read a review or a recommendation about this book and I decided to read it. It could be because it won the Miles Franklin Award, the annual literary award for books that present Australian life, in 2014. Generally, I like books set in Australia and I've read a fair number of these award winners. I have to say that I didn't find this was as good as Truth by Peter Temple or Dirt Music by Tim Winton. It did have its moments though.

Jake Whyte is a female sheep farmer living on her own on an island near England. She is originally from Australia but it will take most of the book to learn how she ended up so far away from home. Something or someone is killing her sheep. She's found two bodies with their bellies ripped open. It must happen in the night time but she's never seen anything. She wonders if it is the local teenagers who hang around the road near her place. When she goes to report the deaths to the police they don't seem to take it too seriously. Then she finds a stranger in her wool shed but he is not at all menacing and she ends up inviting him into her house. Her dog, Dog, is rather ineffectual as a sheep dog and even less of a guard dog. There are hints from the beginning that Jake is escaping from something. Her back is covered with scars and she either doesn't sleep or has bad dreams. In intervening chapters we learn Jake's history but the timeline in these chapters runs in reverse. The name Otto is mentioned long before we are ever introduced to Otto. Jake is muscular and she worked side by side with men in a sheep shearing operation. Further back, she was working as a prostitute but she already had the scarred back by then so that must have happened even earlier. The plot just became too convoluted for me and by the end I didn't really care what had happened to Jake in Australia or what was going to happen to her in England.

Maybe it's a failing on my part but I can't appreciate a book, no matter how well it's written, if I can't empathize with the main character. Jake Whyte is not a sympathetic character.… (more)