Exiles
JANUARY 22, 2023
Today's book: Exiles by Jane Harper (Pan Macmillan). This is one of those rolling good stories that has you turning pages. A woman missing for a year, an earlier unsolved death, a small town of apparently close-knit friends, loads of unearthed secrets and investigators who see what they expect to see. The thing I think will stay with me from this book is a conversation between Falk (protagonist) and Gemma about the difficulties of change. He talks about how hard it is to make changes in life when the sacrifices to get where he is now have been so high. He feels that if he changes course, no matter how good that new direction might be, those sacrifices would be for nothing. I think this is something that often holds people back from making change - and often needlessly so. Everything in life has a time, some things shorter than others. That effort, those sacrifices are never worthless but help us to grow to where we are. Similarities to my writing? I'm not sure.... it is again immersed in the Australian landscape but not as vividly as The Dry and the characters are clear and real. But overall I think this is a different style of writing. And one very much worth reading.