Spare, unsentimental, and deeply resonant; a layered portrait of resilience.
Collis’s latest is a quietly powerful novel of postwar survival set against the harsh beauty of rural Western Australia. Two years after returning from Vietnam, Matthew Walker is still caught in the war’s undertow. The life he left behind has shifted without him, and his place in it feels lost. Hoping to rebuild, he heads to Hammond, a small farming town, to work for the Hammond Herald. A blown tyre on the way leads to his first meeting with Pete Glencross, a weathered share farmer whose fight is with the land, the markets, and the wealthy graziers who shape the district’s fate.
Collis draws Hammond with an unsentimental eye. The town’s social order is fixed, its hierarchies inherited along with acreage. Fitting in demands the same tactical awareness Matthew learned in the army—alliances are sealed over beer and football loyalties, and stepping out of place can carry a cost. Through Pete’s blunt talk, Matthew comes to see the slow erasure of small farms under the “get big or get out” mantra, a policy enriching a few while hollowing the rest. Collis layers this with a quieter history—the absence of the Aboriginal people, their story erased, mirroring other silences the town prefers to keep. Collis’s prose is spare and the dialogue steeped in rural rhythms. The novel ends without tidy closure. Matthew does not fully breach Hammond’s social walls, nor leave the past behind. But he endures, and in Collis’s world, that is its own kind of victory.
Taut, understated, and raw, this is a winner.
Pub date March 11, 2025
ISBN 979-8309859016
Price $14.50 (USD) Paperback, $3.87 Kindle edition
