Rodney Hall as poet emerges from this novel, well worth reading in its complex, twisted prose, although perhaps best placed at the end of the loose trilogy of novels. Although it is not connected to them plot-wise (aside from a couple of subtle references), this story of lust, fear, and captivity on the harsh Australian coast at the end of the 19th century builds much of its strength from Hall's other explorations of such a world.

I am just going to post one of the many powerful passages from the novel, rather than attempt to come to terms with the experience of reading Hall. He deserves to have a much stronger presence on Australian bookshelves.

"Sitting round the oil-lamps of a winter's night, Pa read Lives of the Saints at the rate of about one sentence an hour. Mum read even more dreadful things in the darkness beyond her own familiar dark. And we played a card game called Happy Families.

When the wind blew from the north-east, which it often did, we could hear a distant crash of waves down at the cliffs below the twenty. And when we had gone to bed - as we preyed on each other, breathing each other's snores, turning together in our separate sleep so our bed-springs made harmony or screamed in someone else's nightmare - the cracks between the planks of the rough walls gaped wider and hair-fine glints of a silver sheet turned its wave to our drowning eyes; our bodyheat went sleepwalking till the dogs grew restless and put up their pointed noses and the horses, musing as they stood round in mockery of sleep, bent to stir the fog with caressing tongues and shook magnificent necks in the moonlight of a mare's eye.. While the ocean, that relentless heart, beat beat beat away at the rocks." ( )

This book was amazing. Was significantly more violent than I was expecting. ( )

A troubling, dark book. About a large, poor family living a life of great hardship and brutality in rural Australia. The father is a ‘sad giant’ of a man, given to violence and very dominating of his children. The mother is a silent, mulish, uncaring woman – yet mother to ten children. The father beats one of his sons so severely he becomes a simpleton. Another is routinely flogged and chained to the bed for perceived infractions. A terrible event occurs in 1898 leading to the death of one of the sons, and two of the daughters. The narrator (one of the sons) lives on to expiate his role and tell the story some sixty years later. The writing is excellent, but it’s quite a challenging read – the style is very allusive. Appears to be based on a real crime

Opening paragraph:There were crows in his eyes when he came right out with it, confessing that he had been the murderer. You could see them flapping in there. And now and again the glint of a beak. You can't tell me anything about crows I don't already know at eighty. Nor about him, either. ( )

A dark tale of family, poverty, and murder from one of Australia's most interesting writers. ( )