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The Fifth Season
Jack retreats to an Airbnb cottage in a small coastal town. As a writer he is pre-occupied with the phenomenon of found people: the Somerton Man, the Gippsland Man, the Isdal Woman, people who are found dead – their identities unknown or erased – and the mysterious pull this has on the public mind.
In Blue Bay, as well as encountering the town’s colourful inhabitants, Jack befriends Sarah, whose sister Alice is one of the many thousands of people who go missing every year. Sarah has been painting her sister’s likeness in murals throughout the country, hoping that Alice will be found. Then Jack discovers a book about the people of the town, and about Sarah, which was written by a man who called himself Simon. Who once lived in the same cottage and created a backyard garden comprised of crazy mosaics. Until he too disappeared.
While Sarah’s life seems beholden to an ambiguous grief, Jack’s own condition is unclear. Is he writing or dying? In The Fifth Season Philip Salom brings his virtuoso gifts for storytelling, humour and character to a haunting and unforgettable novel about the tenuousness of life and what it means to be both lost and found.
In Blue Bay, as well as encountering the town’s colourful inhabitants, Jack befriends Sarah, whose sister Alice is one of the many thousands of people who go missing every year. Sarah has been painting her sister’s likeness in murals throughout the country, hoping that Alice will be found. Then Jack discovers a book about the people of the town, and about Sarah, which was written by a man who called himself Simon. Who once lived in the same cottage and created a backyard garden comprised of crazy mosaics. Until he too disappeared.
While Sarah’s life seems beholden to an ambiguous grief, Jack’s own condition is unclear. Is he writing or dying? In The Fifth Season Philip Salom brings his virtuoso gifts for storytelling, humour and character to a haunting and unforgettable novel about the tenuousness of life and what it means to be both lost and found.
- GenresFiction
288 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 9, 2021
Longlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Award.
When the publicans of the Freemasons pub find out why Jack has moved to Blue Bay, they tell him he has moved to the wrong town. Jack is a writer and his reason for moving to this little coastal town is because a body was found on the beach. A body that was found fully dressed, a suitcase sitting by its side on the beach. A body that nobody knew anything about. A body whose identity, years later, is still unknown. And this is what interests Jack. He is writing about bodies that have been found. Bodies with no identities. John and Jane Does.
As he becomes friendlier with the publicans, Else and her husband Kevin, Jack finds out that he is not the only writer who has visited Blue Bay. In fact, a writer who wrote a novel about the town stayed in the very cottage that Jack is living in. Simon Turner was his name. He also disappeared.
Jack finds out that the sister of the owner of the cottage he is living in disappeared a few years ago, and that this owner, Sarah, has been painting murals everywhere in the vague hope that her sister may be recognized. Sarah, like Jack, is searching for something missing.
When we hear Alice’s story, there are a myriad of reasons that could explain her disappearance. She was caring for her dying Mum. She had been trapped in a relationship, more a prisoner than a partner. Because of the palliative care with her mother Alice had access to morphine. Maybe she was using, could she have aided her mother in assisted suicide. To put it bluntly, Alice was not leading a happy life. But the novel is not about Alice. It is about identity, the loss of identity. It is about searching for the missing.
This novel makes you think of the families and the loved ones of missing persons. They feel all the pain and loss, every bit as powerful as a death or passing, but they have no closure, no actual physical presence to mourn. As time goes on the pain can only become worse. There is even a definition, an “ambiguous loss”. A loss without a reason. Schrodinger’s cat is mentioned, and it is interesting because these missing people are in the obverse state of the cat in the experiment, neither alive nor dead.
Jack is suffering from a terminal illness and towards the end of the story it almost feels like he is starting to lose his own identity. He is on experimental drugs and when he starts reading Simon’s novel about the town and its inhabitants, his reality starts to blur with Simon’s narrative. It’s skilful writing.
September 29, 2020
Ever since I discovered the novels of Philip Salom when the Miles Franklin Award shortlisted
Waiting
in 2017, I've been on the lookout for more of his work. I loved
The Returns
which was shortlisted in 2020, and just last week I was excited to track down his early novels Playback (1981) and Toccata and Rain (2004), both published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press.
I haven't read these early novels yet, but because I edited their entries in the Goodreads database, I recognised elements of Toccata and Rain in Salom's new novel, The Fifth Season, published by Transit Lounge. This is from the blurb of Toccata and Rain:
Simon and Sarah are also characters in The Fifth Season, and those astonishing towers of steel and broken ceramic feature as well. But whereas Waiting and The Returns were memorably set in inner Melbourne, The Fifth Season is set in the small coastal town of Blue Bay, and Sarah's backyard is in her airbnb, rented out to Jack who's come to Blue Bay to write.
If you've ever stayed in one of those over-decorated 'homely' B&Bs, you will warm to Jack from the first page:
And that's exactly what he does. He prefers the feng shui of bare floors and walls. Out it all goes until all that remains is a single chair, a table to write at, and a cocktail of medicines on the shelf.
I would have got rid of it too if I planned to live somewhere like this for three months:
Well, fussy and old-fashioned she certainly isn't, but she turns up she's snarky. She hopes he's taken a photo so that he can put it all back exactly where it was, but they become friends notwithstanding.
Jack's project is a book about 'found people': the Somerton Man, the Gippsland Man, the Isdal Woman, the Piano Man, Cornelia Rau. All people who are found dead or amnesiac — their identities unknown by accident or design. But in one of a series of eerie correspondences, Sarah is an activist in search of missing people, and her life is consumed by the absence of her sister. She paints massive portraits of Alice in public spaces, along with portraits of other people who are missing, in order to raise awareness of the Missing Persons Advocacy Network (MPAN). Not everyone likes her doing this, because some people who disappear don't want to be found, (and Jack turns out to be surprisingly brave).
Salom's gift for characterisation is as sharp in a coastal town as it was on the streets of Melbourne in Waiting and The Returns.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/09/29/t...
I haven't read these early novels yet, but because I edited their entries in the Goodreads database, I recognised elements of Toccata and Rain in Salom's new novel, The Fifth Season, published by Transit Lounge. This is from the blurb of Toccata and Rain:
Like a contemporary Rip Van Winkle, Simon awakes only to find he has been inventing another life. He lives where he has no memory of living. There are astonishing towers he has built of steel and broken ceramic in Sarah's Melbourne backyard. He is a man caught between two very different versions of himself.
Simon and Sarah are also characters in The Fifth Season, and those astonishing towers of steel and broken ceramic feature as well. But whereas Waiting and The Returns were memorably set in inner Melbourne, The Fifth Season is set in the small coastal town of Blue Bay, and Sarah's backyard is in her airbnb, rented out to Jack who's come to Blue Bay to write.
If you've ever stayed in one of those over-decorated 'homely' B&Bs, you will warm to Jack from the first page:
The cottage sits above footpath level, with wooden steps up to a front verandah too short for anything besides a table and a wicker armchair. He can see himself there with a glass of wine, watching the ocean as the sea breeze arrives. But not too many or a step forward and he'd plunge into the yard. His writing went downhill, they'd say. At the front door he clicks the numbers into the lock safe and removes the keys. An old-fashioned wooden door, the heft of which is pleasing, then a short corridor of small bedrooms before the space widens out and up, into open plan and vaulted ceilings. The interior is hot and airless. Up, down, across, his laser over-fussy senses have scanned the place in seconds. He knows straight off the space is right but the décor probably needs destroying. (p.3-4)
And that's exactly what he does. He prefers the feng shui of bare floors and walls. Out it all goes until all that remains is a single chair, a table to write at, and a cocktail of medicines on the shelf.
I would have got rid of it too if I planned to live somewhere like this for three months:
...the floral lounge suite, the shrieky porcelain flowers (seriously, why?) on the sideboard, and [...] a starey-faced painting hung on the main wall like a stricken portal into some hell of ever-present eyes. [...]
He hopes that Sarah isn't as fussy and old-fashioned as her decorations; perhaps some idiot rental manager said her customers would be middle-aged women more accustomed to the ... ornamental. Who thought Andrew Lloyd Webber was a genius. (p.4)
Well, fussy and old-fashioned she certainly isn't, but she turns up she's snarky. She hopes he's taken a photo so that he can put it all back exactly where it was, but they become friends notwithstanding.
Jack's project is a book about 'found people': the Somerton Man, the Gippsland Man, the Isdal Woman, the Piano Man, Cornelia Rau. All people who are found dead or amnesiac — their identities unknown by accident or design. But in one of a series of eerie correspondences, Sarah is an activist in search of missing people, and her life is consumed by the absence of her sister. She paints massive portraits of Alice in public spaces, along with portraits of other people who are missing, in order to raise awareness of the Missing Persons Advocacy Network (MPAN). Not everyone likes her doing this, because some people who disappear don't want to be found, (and Jack turns out to be surprisingly brave).
Salom's gift for characterisation is as sharp in a coastal town as it was on the streets of Melbourne in Waiting and The Returns.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/09/29/t...
December 27, 2020
‘The four seasons only exist because of each other.’
Jack moves to an Airbnb in a small Australian coastal town called Blue Bay. He reorganises the Airbnb to his own requirements. The owner, Sarah, when she visits, hopes that he has taken a photograph so that he can return everything to the way it was. Jack’s intention is, over a period of three months, to work on a book about what he thinks of as ‘found bodies’. The bodies may be found, but their identities are lost. Anonymous people found dead: the Somerton Man, the Gippsland Man, the Isdal Woman, bodies found on beaches, in cars, in hotel rooms. The anonymity of these people, the story behind their lives and deaths occupies the public mind as well as the much more personal grief of those who love and miss them.
‘The Fifth Season might be Time, which holds the seasons together.’
Jack meets a number of people in Blue Bay, and befriends Sarah, the owner of the Airbnb. Sarah’s sister Alice is missing. Sarah paints murals of her sister, and of other missing people, across the country hoping that their likenesses will enable them to be found.
But not everyone wants to be found. Sometimes, going missing is a choice. Some stories are complicated and difficult to understand. And Jack himself is grappling with his own continuing existence.
This is a novel which invites the reader to enter a community, to reflect on individual stories of life, to think about who goes missing and why, and about the impact on those left behind. Is it ever possible to return to the way things were, before people go missing, before furniture is rearranged? So many questions.
This is the first of Mr Salom’s novels I have read. I will add his others to my reading list.
‘And in time, what begins as memory becomes history.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Jack moves to an Airbnb in a small Australian coastal town called Blue Bay. He reorganises the Airbnb to his own requirements. The owner, Sarah, when she visits, hopes that he has taken a photograph so that he can return everything to the way it was. Jack’s intention is, over a period of three months, to work on a book about what he thinks of as ‘found bodies’. The bodies may be found, but their identities are lost. Anonymous people found dead: the Somerton Man, the Gippsland Man, the Isdal Woman, bodies found on beaches, in cars, in hotel rooms. The anonymity of these people, the story behind their lives and deaths occupies the public mind as well as the much more personal grief of those who love and miss them.
‘The Fifth Season might be Time, which holds the seasons together.’
Jack meets a number of people in Blue Bay, and befriends Sarah, the owner of the Airbnb. Sarah’s sister Alice is missing. Sarah paints murals of her sister, and of other missing people, across the country hoping that their likenesses will enable them to be found.
But not everyone wants to be found. Sometimes, going missing is a choice. Some stories are complicated and difficult to understand. And Jack himself is grappling with his own continuing existence.
This is a novel which invites the reader to enter a community, to reflect on individual stories of life, to think about who goes missing and why, and about the impact on those left behind. Is it ever possible to return to the way things were, before people go missing, before furniture is rearranged? So many questions.
This is the first of Mr Salom’s novels I have read. I will add his others to my reading list.
‘And in time, what begins as memory becomes history.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
March 13, 2021
Almost. That's how I feel about this novel. The characters are almost compelling. The plot is almost interesting. The writing is almost gripping.
The Fifth Season fell short in every way, shape and form for me.
The blurb is misleading, which got me off on the wrong foot and set the tone for the rest of the novel. Does it talk about Somerton Man, Gippsland Man, Sarah's missing sister? Sure. Is it about them? Not really, and if the blurb had been a bit more honest about that I never would have picked this up.
I get that Salom is a poet, but his writing style did the novel no favours. I found the poetry gratuitous, the way he inserted excepts from a fake novel and the protagonist's dreams a cop-out, and the complete lack of speech marks confusing - his prose writing was not strong enough to create distinction between speech, action and thought.
This isn't the worst, but I feel I wasted my time.
The Fifth Season fell short in every way, shape and form for me.
The blurb is misleading, which got me off on the wrong foot and set the tone for the rest of the novel. Does it talk about Somerton Man, Gippsland Man, Sarah's missing sister? Sure. Is it about them? Not really, and if the blurb had been a bit more honest about that I never would have picked this up.
I get that Salom is a poet, but his writing style did the novel no favours. I found the poetry gratuitous, the way he inserted excepts from a fake novel and the protagonist's dreams a cop-out, and the complete lack of speech marks confusing - his prose writing was not strong enough to create distinction between speech, action and thought.
This isn't the worst, but I feel I wasted my time.
December 25, 2021
2.5 stars
Like Salom's other works I have read this is a very character driven novel and character is something he does so well.
The books blurb states that Jack is pre-occupied with the phenomenon of found people, people who are dead. Perhaps obsessed might be a more apt description. That said, this is a book that is so much more than those famous 'unknowns' like the Somerton man, who is highlighted amongst others in this novel. This is a story about an Australian coastal town and the characters who inhabit it. It is a story about Jack and the person he is trying to find through illness and his own mortality. More importantly it is about those many people who go missing every year in Australia, and the loved ones left behind. It is about loss, uncertainty, grief, illness, identity and the often incorrect classification of people who lose themselves and are lost to us, who are outside of the normal life trajectory, by choice or force.
"The roles of life are quite clear: life requires a body, and death requires a body, and a story joins them. Alice's case is an aberration: there is no body and no death. She is neither alive nor dead."
There were parts of this book that I loved and certainly the quality of the writing kept me reading but overall the premise and the ideas had more potential than the overall actuality - if that makes any sense! The actual physical structuring of the book is dense, there is little white space, 122 pages before the first break in the narrative and I wanted a break especially given the depth of the themes and characters being explored.
I enjoyed this book, but no where near as much as I had hoped nor as I did others by this author, especially The Returns. I cannot help but think that this is a book that would benefit from discussion - the garnering and comparing of ideas from different readers perspectives.
Like Salom's other works I have read this is a very character driven novel and character is something he does so well.
The books blurb states that Jack is pre-occupied with the phenomenon of found people, people who are dead. Perhaps obsessed might be a more apt description. That said, this is a book that is so much more than those famous 'unknowns' like the Somerton man, who is highlighted amongst others in this novel. This is a story about an Australian coastal town and the characters who inhabit it. It is a story about Jack and the person he is trying to find through illness and his own mortality. More importantly it is about those many people who go missing every year in Australia, and the loved ones left behind. It is about loss, uncertainty, grief, illness, identity and the often incorrect classification of people who lose themselves and are lost to us, who are outside of the normal life trajectory, by choice or force.
"The roles of life are quite clear: life requires a body, and death requires a body, and a story joins them. Alice's case is an aberration: there is no body and no death. She is neither alive nor dead."
There were parts of this book that I loved and certainly the quality of the writing kept me reading but overall the premise and the ideas had more potential than the overall actuality - if that makes any sense! The actual physical structuring of the book is dense, there is little white space, 122 pages before the first break in the narrative and I wanted a break especially given the depth of the themes and characters being explored.
I enjoyed this book, but no where near as much as I had hoped nor as I did others by this author, especially The Returns. I cannot help but think that this is a book that would benefit from discussion - the garnering and comparing of ideas from different readers perspectives.
Read
December 1, 2020The Drones, who hail from Philip Salom’s hometown of Western Australia, gave us one of the greatest songs of 2016. Inspired by the story of the Somerton Man, whose body was discovered in Adelaide in 1948, it’s a prickly post-punk number called Taman Shud (a misspelling of the Persian for ‘‘it is ended’’). No one knows who the Somerton Man was or how he died; our only clue is a scrap of paper in his fob pocket inscribed with the aforementioned words.
Not exactly a smoking gun, either: the line was torn from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a famous collection of Persian poetry.
It’s a great piece of music; certainly the greatest inspired by The Rubaiyat since accomplished jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby released The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby in 1970. And reader, normally as a critic, I wouldn’t feel licensed to be as indulgently referential as I am being here – but Salom’s latest novel practically begged me to.
Read on: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...
Read on:
Not exactly a smoking gun, either: the line was torn from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a famous collection of Persian poetry.
It’s a great piece of music; certainly the greatest inspired by The Rubaiyat since accomplished jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby released The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby in 1970. And reader, normally as a critic, I wouldn’t feel licensed to be as indulgently referential as I am being here – but Salom’s latest novel practically begged me to.
Read on: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...
Read on:
February 12, 2024
3.5. Another fascinating character-driven novel from Philip Salom. Missing people. People missing people. People missing missing people. Jack and Sarah two excellently drawn characters, both in the thrall of ‘missing’ people meet when Jack (an author) rents an Airbnb from Sarah (a visual artist) in a small Victorian town. This novel was sad. And uplifting. And funny. The supporting cast are diverse and real, adding richness to the story. I just hope no one ever ‘decorates, my backyard in the way Simon did.
February 8, 2021
Miles Franklin shortlisted author Philip Salom’s latest novel The Fifth Season (Transit Lounge 2020) features his trademark literary style, a deep dive into the nuances of his characters and an existential examination of their motivations and behaviour. Salom’s writing is highly literary and at times quite beautiful and profound. While there is a plot, he focuses more on the interactions of the characters and their internal musings about what life is about, why they are here, what is the purpose of their existence and how they are best placed to achieve their potential, whatever fate that may be.
In The Fifth Season, we meet Jack who has retreated to an Airbnb cottage in a small coastal town, ostensibly to write, but also to engage in his passion for ‘found people’. As opposed to those merely missing, which is a tragic but different issue, ‘found people’ are those rare individuals that are found dead with ‘their identities unknown or erased’; mysterious events that haunt the places these people are found, often for years afterwards. Jack befriends Sarah, whose sister Alice went missing several years earlier. Sarah paints huge murals of the faces of those missing onto public walls and bridges and the sides of silos. Jack becomes enmeshed with the strange people of the close-knit town and discovers a book written by a man called Simon who once lived in the same cottage, and decorated the entire backyard with gaudy and crazy mosaic tile work, and who is himself now missing.
Jack’s health is ambiguous throughout the novel and the reader begins to wonder whether he has come to Blue Bay to write, or to die.
While there is a lot to love about this book, it was not really what I was expecting. I supposed I anticipated it would be more about the missing, and the unusual cases of the ‘found people’, but it was less about that and more about the whole theme of grief and loss, the ‘tenuousness of life’, the relationships people build to connect, even when they are strangers, and the often strange intersections they find in common with which to connect.
I found I didn’t really care enough about these characters to keep the book engaging for me; I lost interest in what happened to them, and that was a shame, because Salom is a compelling writer, and it is easy to get lost in his beautifully rendered sentences.
In The Fifth Season, we meet Jack who has retreated to an Airbnb cottage in a small coastal town, ostensibly to write, but also to engage in his passion for ‘found people’. As opposed to those merely missing, which is a tragic but different issue, ‘found people’ are those rare individuals that are found dead with ‘their identities unknown or erased’; mysterious events that haunt the places these people are found, often for years afterwards. Jack befriends Sarah, whose sister Alice went missing several years earlier. Sarah paints huge murals of the faces of those missing onto public walls and bridges and the sides of silos. Jack becomes enmeshed with the strange people of the close-knit town and discovers a book written by a man called Simon who once lived in the same cottage, and decorated the entire backyard with gaudy and crazy mosaic tile work, and who is himself now missing.
Jack’s health is ambiguous throughout the novel and the reader begins to wonder whether he has come to Blue Bay to write, or to die.
While there is a lot to love about this book, it was not really what I was expecting. I supposed I anticipated it would be more about the missing, and the unusual cases of the ‘found people’, but it was less about that and more about the whole theme of grief and loss, the ‘tenuousness of life’, the relationships people build to connect, even when they are strangers, and the often strange intersections they find in common with which to connect.
I found I didn’t really care enough about these characters to keep the book engaging for me; I lost interest in what happened to them, and that was a shame, because Salom is a compelling writer, and it is easy to get lost in his beautifully rendered sentences.
January 24, 2021
I've really enjoyed the recent run of novels from poet Philip Salom. His previous two (Waiting and The Returns) were both shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. This one moves from North Melbourne to a fictional coastal town in Gippsland called Blue Bay and it also harks back to an earlier experimental novel of Salom's, Toccata and Rain (which I haven't read). Salom's narrator in The Fifth Season is a writer who is interested in missing people and their obverse, the people who are found dead but whose identity remains a mystery, such as the Somerton Man (also known as the Tamam Shud). He rents a cottage that had been previously rented by another writer, who had written a self-published book about the community, sections of which are reproduced in this novel (and are apparently taken from Toccata and Rain). It's a complex, intertextual approach and a very intellectual work that is less accessible than Salom's last two works. It feels like it perhaps peters out without achieving much in the way of resolution, but the journey is definitely worth taking.
January 2, 2021
Overly self-absorbed. I have loved Philip Salom's beautiful writing in his previous books ("Waiting" is among the best books I have ever read) - the way every word is selected & sentence is carefully crafted - something that probably comes from his poetry. And this book doesn't disappoint in writing technique. However, it doesn't have enough emphasis on the storyline to pull the writing through, tending to disappear into ever more complex contemplation of loss & being. Disappointing; but probably because I approached it with very high expectations.
March 20, 2023
I was looking forward to this after reading Sweeney and the Bicycles but was disappointed. It had a similar mixture of characters but somehow they didn't compliment each other as well as in 'Sweeney'.
The main character's story was too complex with which to sympathise which made the other characters less inviting.
The main character's story was too complex with which to sympathise which made the other characters less inviting.
September 2, 2023
DNFed at about the 30% mark because this was just painful to read. No likeable characters, writing was painful to read, didn’t really care about the plot. And he kept saying the Somerton man was found on a Glenelg beach. He was found on a Somerton beach, hence the name.
January 24, 2021
Well - almost read! It took some time to understand what was going on in this story. Often I found difficulty in understanding the text, but then when I got a handle on it, I wasn't interested
February 14, 2021
I enjoyed the way this was written more than I enjoyed the story itself.
March 29, 2021
Found this book a bit frustrating, and just a bit continuous. Some interesting themes and it was ok, but didn’t enjoy it that much.
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