This will hurt me...

  Tall gums. Tasman National Park, Tasman Peninsula. May 2021. Force of Nature by Jane Harper  Much like  The Dry , I found this one a gripping little police procedural with a small cast of characters, an intriguing mystery and a suitably claustrophobic setting. Like the earlier novel, the landscape is at the forefront of generating tension. This time around, the dark, cool temperate rainforest of Victoria's east replaces the dry and arid plains of the northwest. However, ghosts of the past remain. Events move at a cracking pace, and the narrative jumps backwards and forwards across multiple perspectives. Then, finally, the story moves back towards the explanation as to exactly what happened out there in the bush. Harper has chosen a particularly odious bunch of corporate women within which she centres her mystery. Suffice to say, there are plenty of candidates from this small bunch with whom we'd enjoy some comeuppance. The book deftly treads the line between exciting, engagi

  Looking southwest from Cape Raoul, Tasman National Park. May 2021. Taboo by Kim Scott Kim Scott has achieved a great feat with  Taboo . In tackling a subject so replete with immense themes - decolonisation, pain, the art of memory and forgetting - he manages to toe the line successfully like few others. Moreover, he's written an authentic and engaging book on the murder, dispossession and maltreatment of the Noongar people that is at once sombre yet optimistic. This is all the more startling from a book saturated with violence of all kinds. Violence upon violence over generations to the point where our heroes are both sullied by that violence - both perpetrators and victims - and retain the redemptive power that will be required to ensure that a persecuted people can both survive and prosper. Australia has now reached the 'truth-telling' phase of real reconciliation. After two centuries of colonial dispossession, repression masked as harmony and silent shame, this is a no

  Smokey sunset, the Tasman Peninsula. May 2021. Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia  A fragmented and uneven thing, it seems obvious that this novel began as a series of disparate short stories connected by the themes of gender and immigrant identity. While parts of this are excellent, other parts seem at once overwritten and underdeveloped. Given the centrality of the theme of identity, many of the characters lack depth and are unconvincing. The central thread tying damaged mother to damaged daughter doesn't ring completely true. While the ancillary tale of a different mother and daughter is affecting, it feels haphazardly grafted on. For mine, the fragments of beautiful writing can't quite conquer the disjointed nature of the whole. ⭐ ⭐ 1/2

Looking down over Hobart, kunanyi/ Mt Wellington. May 2021. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan As I continue to haphazardly wind my way through Richard Flanagan's oeuvre, I turn towards his Booker Prize-winning  The Narrow Road to the Deep North . A book of many distinct parts, I felt the standout section was Book Three, detailing life in the Japanese prisoner of war camps with the Sisyphean task of building a railway in the jungle with no food, equipment or (for many) the hope of an ending. Other elements - mainly those centring the love affair between Dorrigo Evans and Amy - I found overly sentimental and unconvincing. Given the internal struggle within Dorrigo, his outward bravery, and generosity juxtaposed with a cold and clinical relationship with his wife and children, the constant return to Amy felt a little forced and false. I could have also done without the twist and reveal of the connection between Dorrigo and poor old Darky Gardiner towards the end.

The Tarn Shelf. Mount Field National Park, April 2021. Death of a River Guide by Richard Flanagan A strange thing this, Flanagan's first novel. There are moments of sublime beauty in which the rugged Tasmanian west is at once a critical character as it the creator of life and deliverer of death. Beginning with the moment of local river guide Aljaz Cosini's death, the book unravels through a series of flashbacks, imaginings, visions and hallucinations. From here, we travel backwards to Aljaz's birth, then further back to the births, lives and deaths of his forebears. From here, we jump back and forth across time and place, occasionally revisiting Alijaz in the split second of his death as the story plays out. Make no bones about it; the book can be hard going at times. Filled with magical thinking and allusions to Tasmanian history's hard and dark tales, our narrator stands in place for the State. The mongrel stock of convict and free settler, of immigrant and a darker

  Which way? Geilston Bay, May 2021. Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire  A dark prequel (of sorts) that explores the fore-story of the 'twins' from McGuire's  Every Heart a Doorway . Slighter than the first book, this is a dark little tale that moves at a great pace and explores some heavy themes through a unique lens. Although I'm being patient and stringing the series out, I am keen to get in there and read the next book! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2