Favel Parrett - Past The Shallows

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Haunting and memorable

I thought this was an excellent book. It could have been terrible - a story of children with a bitter, cold and brutal father struggling to survive in a desolate part of Australia has the potential to be unreadably grim or repellently sentimental but this is neither. It is excellently judged and beautifully written, and I found it compelling and haunting.

Favel Parrett has previously written short stories and I think that is a great benefit to this debut novel. The book itself is commendably short and she shows the concision of the short-story writer in her wonderful ability to conjure character from a few thoughts and actions rather than long descriptions. Parrett also describes the landscape and sea of southern Tasmania beautifully, creating a real sense of the place and of its toughness and desolation. The story is told in the third person from the points of view of Miles and his younger brother Harry and I found the narrative engrossing and at times very touching. Parrett captures the sense of young Harry's kindness and of his insecurity very well. For example, Harry hears about someone whose brother went away to the war and never came back and "...thought that if Miles got lost, if Miles never came home, Harry's insides would go wrong and might never come right again." I found that really a moving evocation of a young boy's fears, and there is a lot here of a similar quality.

There is no a fast-paced plot, but there is often real drive and tension to the narrative. It is thoroughly involving and has a lot to say about kindness, about what family means and about the need to balance one's own freedom with one's responsibilities to others. This is a haunting and memorable book and I recommend it very warmly.