Jane Harper’s debut novel The Dry (Pan Macmillan Australia 2016) has had so much publicity and garnered so many award nominations that I came to it with some trepidation, almost fearful it would not live up to its reputation. But from the very first pages of the prologue, I was hooked – on the story, on the characters, and on the setting, which is quintessentially Australian. This is a good, solid crime drama that has clearly been edited and rewritten until not a word is wasted.
The story itself – the crime – is shocking, and delivered in a measured pace with a restrained hand. There are victims and suspects and witnesses galore; not all of them are reliable, not all of them are telling the truth. Federal Investigator Aaron Falk returns to the town of his childhood to mourn the loss of his former friend, Luke Hadler, whom everyone assumes has committed suicide after killing his wife and child, after being driven mad by the lack of rain and the distressing conditions on the land. But as Falk is drawn unwittingly into his own investigation of Hadler’s death, he discovers that all is not as it first seems, and that an event from his adolescence – an event that caused Falk and his father to be ostracised from the community – is still lodged deep in the hearts and minds of the townspeople of Kiewarra, who find it difficult to forgive and impossible to forget. Could the events of twenty years earlier be connected to the death of the Hadler family?
The plot kept me guessing until the very end, with secrets, misunderstandings and cover-ups leading everyone astray. Harper uses flashbacks very effectively to fill in missing information from years earlier, from the perspective of various people. This back and forth in time worked well and was never jarring. The pace of the narrative is taut as a tightwire; each chapter ends with a mini-cliffhanger that forces the reader to begin the next, while the flashbacks offer some respite from the terrible events of the present, and immerse us in remembered events from the past, albeit recalled with varying degrees of accuracy, and from different perspectives. This allows our suspicions of characters’ motivations to percolate and strengthen.
The characters are well-rounded and developed; they are flawed and insecure, vulnerable and cagey, likeable and dislikeable. Although the victims are deceased from the opening chapter, they too have a strong presence in the book, and their personalities resonate throughout. The dialogue is natural and compelling; it is also very Australian and familiar.
And the setting – the bone-dry dust of central Australia in the grip of a drought. Rain hasn’t fallen in the small town of Kiewarra for two years, and the air is charged with tension. Farmers struggling to feed their livestock, families buying in water, the bush itself tinder-dry and vulnerable to the slightest flare. The native flora and fauna, the prevailing weather conditions, the topography and geography of the land – all combine to create a sense of place that is familiar and compelling. Even the blowflies – a constant theme throughout – provide a recurring buzz of menace.
This is a book about fear and guilt, about recompense and forgiveness, and about the vagaries of memory. It is about the divided loyalties of people who are frightened and anxious and sceptical and suspicious. It is about young people on the cusp of adolescence who make mistakes, and about how they carry the guilt of their decisions through to adulthood. It is about the legacy of desperate acts and the keeping of secrets.
The Dry – Jane Harper
