Karen Chisholm
REVIEW
Review - HOMECOUNTRY, T.W. Lawless
Reviewed By
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
The first of the Peter Clancy books from T.W. Lawless, HOMECOUNTRY takes Clancy to exactly that - home to the town where he grew up, in outback Queensland to bury his mother. With his credo of never looking back this is the first time he's returned to Clarke's Flat since he left, so for the first time he's forced to confront many of the reasons why he left in the first place. And it's not a comfortable outlook.
There's much that's happened in his home town to him, to his family and to friends and people who are still in town. There's questions around his own father's death, about this mother's actions after selling the farm and moving to town, and in particular, in what happened when he was a teenager, to his then girlfriend. None of this paints anybody much in a particularly good light. Especially Clancy who, perhaps because of that never looking back thing, has left some chaos in his wake and seems particularly put out that he's going to have to sort some stuff out. Now.
Having read the second book in the series first, Clancy does become a more engaging character than he might be for anyone coming to HOMECOUNTRY first up. Here he could come across as too blasé about something that caused so much damage. Although he does eventually twig and try to make reparations. He also does approach a lot of things with a hefty dose of cynicism (as you'd fully expect from anybody who could work for The Truth). And the man has exactly the taste in music you'd expect from somebody born in his era - Hendix, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple fan and all.
Dryly humorous throughout, with occasional bursts of flat out funny, Clancy is not all bad, and his mother wasn't completely wrong to do what she did, and the past is sometimes a tricky place to navigate. As a debut novel, HOMECOUNTRY is well written, with strong storytelling, particularly when you consider that the central character is just a bit ambiguous. If I'd read this as a debut there's certainly enough to make me look for the rest of the series. (The second book is THORNYDEVILS, the third BLURLINES).
Worth a look and not just for those of us who grew up in the bush, remember those bands, remember The Truth, and have a feel for what it's like to be from small town 1980's and be desperate to be anywhere else.
BOOK DETAILS
BOOK INFORMATION
BLURB
Peter Clancy is a hard-drinking, hard-living journalist for the Melbourne Truth newspaper. He is unscrupulous in getting the dirt on society figures for the salacious stories the scandal sheet publishes. Upon hearing of the death of his mother in the outback Queensland town of Clarke's Flat, Peter returns to see to her affairs. He plans a quick trip to his childhood home, and aims to return to Melbourne within a few days. But things don't go according to his plan.
In Clarke's Flat, Peter meets several of his childhood friends and acquaintances who draw him into the sinister secrets of this outback town. His childhood friend, Dave Tindall, is now a police constable in the town. With Sam Saturday, an erstwhile Aboriginal stockman on the former Clancy cattle station, Dave convinces Peter to help him prove the suicides of Dave's father and his business partner were actually murders.
Peter's quest for evidence will stir up more than he bargained for- including his own shameful past. Will Peter Clancy succumb to despair and bolt, or will he expose Clarke's Flat sins and despotism and claim his own redemption.
| Review | Review - HOMECOUNTRY, T.W. Lawless | Karen Chisholm
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Tuesday, May 5, 2015 |
| Blog | Currently Reading - Homecountry, T.W. Lawless | Karen Chisholm
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