In Robert Drewe’s latest collection of stories, people often find themselves caught in rip tides of ill fortune. Snake bites, car accidents, marauding dingoes, unexpected adulteries – these are all part of the rough seas of circumstance that crash without warning over the lives of Drewe’s characters. The dominant note of the collection is this quality of suddenness: out of the blue, bad things happen to good people. Most of The Rip’s characters are benign and likeable enough (even the shonky businessman awaiting trial on fraud charges is a long way from outright villainy), but each of them discovers the world turned upside down by what the title story calls ‘the abruptness of savage chance’.