Coal Creek (Alex Miller, A&U)

The latest novel by two-time Miles Franklin Award-winning novelist Alex Miller is a rural love story that is harsh and beautiful like the Mount Hay bushland that narrator Bobby Blue knows and loves so well. When his father dies, stockman Bobby takes a job as the new town constable Daniel Collins’ offsider. He becomes a friend to the Collins family, especially the eldest daughter Irie, who teaches him to read. There is always a distance between these coastal folk and Bobby, however, which is most apparent through Bobby’s quiet evaluations of Daniel’s abilities in the bush. Irie is the only member of the Collins family who truly attempts to bridge this divide, but when tragedy strikes the limits of friendship are tested. Bobby is a simple and taciturn young man, more at home in the scrub of Coal Creek than at the Collins’ dinner table. His tale meanders through memories of the countryside, the locals, and his own childhood. Because of this subdued mode of storytelling, the tension mounts gradually and when tragedy strikes it is truly, hideously, mesmerising. Reminiscent of Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang, Coal Creek is an evocative and moving novel of the Australian bush.

Portia Lindsay is a former bookseller who now works at the NSW Writers’ Centre

Category: Reviews