Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Sean Rabin, Giramondo Publishing, $26.95.
Wood Green cleverly creates the confined atmosphere of small-town life. There’s a lot that goes on which is intriguing.
Taking on the job as secretary to his literary hero Lucian Carke, Michael is committed to becoming a writer. He’s finished his PhD and wants to make a new life for himself.
Clarke lives in a cottage in a village on the mountain outside the city. He’s an unsociable novelist with a mysterious past.
“Clarke’s novels were large works of complex imagination that contained stories within stories and required hours of undistracted concentration just to read…”
Michael has a phobia of flying, but has arrived in Tasmania. After landing in Hobart he smiles with relief at having survived another flight.
There isn’t much to Wood Green, but it has nice views. It’s ‘peopled by an ensemble cast, the local publican, the single mother who manages the pub’s kitchen, the unhappily married couple that runs the corner store, a newcomer from Johannesburg with a murky past, a snivelling B&B proprietor and a determined ex-girlfriend’.
Rabin writes with sense of humor and astuteness. While exploring the perils of literary ambition and the elusive prospect of artistic legacy, he skillfully executes an unsuspected plot twist.
