I opened the first pages of FROGSONG (UQP 2026) with somewhat anxious trepidation, because how could author Melissa Manning have written a novel as wonderful as her first book SMOKEHOUSE (an impossibly good collection of interlocked short stories)?
But my worries were for naught. Manning has again delivered a beautiful, skilfully rendered, lyrical, elegiac and haunting story about grief, friendship, young love, lives not lived and the agony of letting go.
Manning’s style is spare, sparse, pared back prose, almost as if she has taken out every second word (or at least every unnecessary word), and gifted the reader the outline of narrative in a simple, clean, devastating and moving language. The narrator Caro is as authentic as if she is a real person, someone we know, telling us her life story. Her tale is full of longing and regret, anxiety and love, tough decisions and careless mistakes. It’s a story of endless hope, of terrible fear, of resentment and illness, of worry and joy. It is a marvel.
Caro and her friend Danny grow up together, spending their time catching tadpoles at the local waterhole, and discover the end of childhood, burgeoning adolescence, and the responsibilities of young adulthood. Caro imagines her future will always be with Danny, especially after the promise she made to his mother.
But their braided lives become unentwined when Danny’s demons beset him and he dabbles with danger and eventually struggles with addiction. A perfect childhood in the untouched beauty of the Tasmanian wilderness becomes less haven and more constricting isolation. Caro is afforded some measure of peace when she escapes to travel in Lisbon, but her lost dreams and the pull of her unrequited childhood force her to confront some difficult truths.
This is a literary romance in the absences as much as what is present, a heartbreaking story of childhood innocence, shattered dreams and questions which have no answers. The ending will leave you yearning for more, the subtle but never entirely settled ambiguity a sweet sting in the tale.