One of those that you wish wouldn't end ....

I came to this book in a fairly oblique way. Last year I listened to an audiobook called 'To the Island' on the strength of it being read by my favourite narrator, Humphrey Bower. I was sufficiently impressed with that novel to also try this one.
Few are the novels that capture a time and place at both an emotional and pictorial level. In order to enjoy this kind of novel, the reader must also be willing to be captured, to take the work at a leisurely pace, to ruminate in the work. This is such a book. As I listened, I felt a growing and intimate acquaintance with a time, WW2 and its aftermath, and a place, western Australia, foreign to me. I was touched by the emotional lives of an extended family in a way that few writers can achieve, and felt tears at many moments, especially later in the novel, in the ongoing dialogue and relationship between the returning soldier, Rick, and the young boy, Rob. Rick especially had to confront the same existential questions that often concern me, although in a different setting.
The deep, interior view of the lives of the characters in this novel rivals that of 'To the Lighthouse' which evokes a similar time period. Both works bracket the war period with a profound sense of loss.
Can't say enough about how much I enjoyed this work and Stow is now on my 'read everything I can' list which contains perhaps 2 dozen writers in all.
In my own mind I would place Stow among the best late modern writers along with Steinbeck and Hersey of the USA and Woolf and Waugh of Britain. I understand Stow is well known in Australia, but not here in Canada. I suppose I'm more chuffed to have found another great writer, than disappointed that it has come so late.

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