Rating: 5/5
Review:
Excellent
I loved The Lost Man. It’s thoughtful, engrossing and rather
powerful.
The synopsis isn’t
that alluring: in the Australian Outback in the punishing heat of a
Queensland midsummer a man is found dead by his two brothers near the
boundary of the two properties in which they have lived all their
lives. There is a mystery about why he broke the cardinal rules of
Outback survival and as questions are asked, some dark family history
and secrets emerge. It sounds very familiar ground, but Jane Harper
creates something quite special out of it.
The whole thing is
beautifully done. Harper’s writing is unflashy and readable, but
has a quiet excellence about it. She generates a very powerful sense
of place and the effect of the harsh conditions on its inhabitants.
The story unrolls slowly but for me very grippingly as she develops
her characters with delicacy, insight and subtlety. Dialogue in
particular is excellent as believable characters emerge gently but
powerfully and a sense of tension and menace slowly builds. We also
get a fine, insightful picture of the effects of loneliness and
isolation and of the long, bitter memories which can persist in a
small community.
If you expect
mutilated corpses, several Big Twists, car chases and the like, this
won’t be for you. The pace is slow and measured, but the
atmosphere and mystery are beautifully done, I found it utterly
gripping and there is genuine human insight here, too. It’s one of
the best books I’ve read for a while and I recommend it very
warmly.
(My thanks to
Little, Brown for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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