Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Mick McCoy, Transit Lounge, $29.99.
There’s a feeling of this title being unpredictably suitable, bearing in mind world politics and that fact that Russia is a mjor presence in the news.
It is a work of fiction, but based on experiences of Bernice and Dave Morris, active communists, who are McCoy’s aunt and uncle. With their two adopted sons, they fled from Australia to Russia after the Petrov Affair in the 1950s.
The comparison game continues. Australia is compared with the Russia of the late 1950s and 1960s. It explores how each nation struggled to deal with difference and achieve acceptance.
It is also the story of Ruby, and of her and Conrad’s adopted son, Alex, and biological son Peter, and of the tension and intrigue that confronts them and shapes their lives in two countries.
Russia lives and breathes in McCoy’s superb evocation of it, but Australia is never far away. As Peter says, “Tell me again why we’re still here?’
Told with suspense and rich in characterisation with surprising plot twists, this is a novel of both heart and intellect, a book about the need to belong, about what a family is and why we all need one.
“In an increasingly alienated and narrow-minded world, What the Light Reveals is a guiding light: a novel that brilliantly captures the sometimes disturbing drawbacks of individual belief. Conrad is falsely accused of passing military secrets to the Russians. His life and that of his family is turned upside down by discrimination and fear.” “Unemployed, misrepresented by the media, betrayed by relatives and threatened by strangers, Conrad sees no choice but to uproot his family from their homeland to start a new life in Moscow.”
To win one of two books of What the Light Reveals, tell us the names of McCoy’s aunt and uncle. Entries should be sent to [email protected] by next Monday, 20 August 2018. Names of the winners will be announced in Frank Cassidy’s PS-sssst…! column next week.
