Newcastle author Michael Sala made a splash with his debut novel The Last Thread (Affirm Press, 2012). It won the NSW Premier's Award for New Writing 2013, and the Commonwealth Book Prize for the Pacific Region in the same year. That success was followed by The Restorer (Text Publishing, 2017), which in 2018 was longlisted for the Miles Franklin, and nominated for both the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction, and the ABIA Small Publishers Book Award. The novel is a tense portrait of a dysfunctional family...

The book is set in 1989. That was the year when the Berlin Wall crumpled under the onslaught from ordinary people; when the Chinese pro-democracy movement was crushed in the massacre in Tiananmen Square; and when the Newcastle earthquake killed thirteen people, hospitalised 160, and made 1000 people homeless. Allusions in the novel to these tectonic events suggest the complexities of 'restoration': East and West Germany were subsequently restored to unity with some fractures remaining even now; the Chinese government restored a widely condemned and uneasy order in China over the bodies of the protestors; and the earthquake created the imperative for restoration even though things could never be the same, not least for the injured and bereaved.

Sala's novel mirrors these events. Maryanne tries to 'restore' her family, to bring them back together after separation but she finds that their shared history doesn't mean they have enough in common to thrive. Her authoritarian husband Roy tolerates no dissension and enforces his will with violence; and efforts to restore the family to its earlier days cannot make things the way they were.

The story is told through three voices: Maryanne, vacillating between standing up to her husband and letting her love for him take precedence; her daughter Freya whose coming-of-age is marred by the constant conflict at home and her own risk-taking behaviour; and — bookending the novel — Richard, a gay neighbour, who performs the role of the bystander who defers intervention until its too late.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/05/19/the-restorer-by-michael-sala/ ( )

Discriptive,raw,touching and well told. A daughter who is going off the rails,a protecvtive mother and a violent dominating father. They move to Newcastle to start again with disastrous consequences. ( )

Reading a novel that deals with real life dilemma and tragedy can be a tricky thing. We all know terrible things can happen to good people, and navigating the turbulent waters of life without falling in is no easy matter, for any of us. But do we want to read about it? How can you say you ‘enjoyed’ a book when the content is disturbing to the point that you dread reading on? These were some of our members thoughts this month when discussing the novel The Restorer by Michael Sala.
No one really found fault with the writing, believing it to be descriptive and clever with building tension and implied violence. And although there was some criticism regarding the research into the education system and Newcastle itself, generally the story was well plotted, topical and emotive.
Everyone picked up on the analogy of the house and the marriage, and if Sala got anything right it was the character of Freya and what her family’s toxic nature cost her. In fact, one thing that our whole group agreed upon was the their concern for the children. One of our readers could not continue until she had flipped to the end to be sure the children were okay!
So, although ‘enjoy’ might not feel quite right in describing The Restorer, there is no doubt that the story brings the reader to a sensitive and emotional state, and that does, in most cases make for an impressive read. ( )

After reading Michael Sala's first book (I didn't actually get very far though it) I wrote "...I have strong doubts about leaving his second book, "The Restorer" on my wish-list, despite (or because of?) its Miles Franklin long listing. (Again, I suspect the focus on the issue family violence is what is being awarded rather than the writing itself. Maybe. We'll see )". Well, now that I have actually read The Restorer I can report that I was wrong. Sala's story is quite convincing and was definitely emotionally engaging for me. In the days over which I read this story I could feel a tension rising in my whole life, linked to the rising tension of the story. OK, the ending was mostly rather predictable, but I suppose in some ways the story of family violence in Australia is also becoming known to be rather predictable. That's one of the points of this novel, I guess. But this is more than just a story of domestic violence, it's an examination of families in broader terms - what the teenage years are like, how one generation affects the next, what marriage does and doesn't offer. It's also very much a story of the city in which this story is set - the Australian (post?) industrial coastal port city of Newcastle. So I reckon the Miles Franklin judges did OK with this choice for the long-list. It didn't win - and my cynicism about the award continues despite what I think about Michael Sala's contribution. I don't think Michelle de Kretser will be featuring on my TBR list. ( )