Stephanie Green

A flooding river in the Victorian goldfields of the late 1890s dominates Robert Engwerda’s second novel, Mosquito Creek. Hidden undercurrents, old secrets and the threat of imminent death shadow this compelling narrative. Engwerda strives for a mood of anticipation, which is heightened by longing and brutality. The story follows events in the lives of several key inhabitants of a remote township, each struggling to cope with the rising flood. A bureaucrat commissions a boat to be built in order to rescue marooned miners; a policeman tries to maintain order in the town while he tries to solve a murder; a woman dreams of escape from a violent father. Linking these characters’ stories is the ambiguous presence of Phillip Oriente, the murder victim, who appears almost entirely through a series of second-hand accounts.

Part historical murder mystery, part journey towards reconciliation, at the heart of Amanda Curtin’s novel, The Sinkings, is a figure whom we barely meet but whose existence is the key to this remarkable narrative.

Sarah Hay’s new novel is set in north-western Australia against a background of intense heat and bone-hard country, a continent away from the grim southern island setting of her previous novel, Skins (2001). Although this second novel by the Vogel-winning author explores a very different place and time, the two novels share some common terrain. Both unfold in remote locations where conditions of survival are harsh; both explore themes of loneliness, will, desire and the impact of colonisation.

In the acknowledgments to this collection of short stories, Stephanie Green tells us that these stories came to her over sixteen years. Several stories draw on her life as a teacher, academic and freelance writer. There are university yarns and staffroom intrigue, along with busy pieces from family history. Overall, these are stories of women in states of change: a wife, returning to the childhood farm, considers leaving her husband; a faded jazz singer reflects on the highs and lows of her career; an artist returns to her roots in the country.

Set beyond the pale of white settlement, Sarah Hay’s Skins is a compelling and often violent story of an Englishwoman shipwrecked off the southern coast of Western Australia in 1835. Winner of the 2002 Australian/Vogel Literary Award, it is a powerful evocation of a time and place rarely featured in Australian literary fiction.