Scrublands discussion

Scrublands
Chris Hammer


Scrublands would be just an ordinary book about a rural town, Riversend, suffering from an endless drought and punitive heat without Chris Hammer’s marvelous writing skills.

The Author is cagey with his characters. False rumors and lies and hints to the truth pervade the interviews with each character. Ordinary stereotype characters reveal themselves to be quite different. Characters that start weird, walking around naked, evolve to be very warm hearted.


The plot is beautifully paced and tortuous very much like the theme of Ravel’s Bolero. It’s slow and steady start leads to unsuspected events and deeds by characters, and ends with an emotional surge. Always in the background is the theme of Why. It is this question of Why that Journalist Martin Scarsden has come to research and write about.


Martin and Riversend are coping with the aftermath of traumatic experiences. He has been sent to Riversend to follow up how the town and its inhabitants are coping one year after their much loved local priest, Byron Swift, opened fire on five of his parishioners before being shot by the local constable.

The stories he hears from the locals about the priest and incidents leading up to the shooting differ from the accepted version of events his own newspaper reported at the time of the shooting. Martin is consistently urged by some of the locals to uncover the real reasons behind the priest’s deadly rampage.

Martin’s reasons for seeking the Why of the shooting become very personal after a few unexpected tragic and disastrous events involve him saving a life, fighting a fire and rescuing a toddler. As he comes closer to finding the true facts, he is dismissed from the story and he himself becomes a media story.

I am so glad that the editor sent me this book, because I don’t think I would have placed it on my want to read list and I would have missed a wonderful read. This is a book, I will keep and reread.

Excellent

Loved this read

I really enjoyed this book. Gave a real insight into the Australian interior, and was full of intrigue - both in terms of the plot and psychology. A great read.

Loved this book. I've been to Oz and this tale really put me back in the scene. So many satisfying twists and characters. It's a frontier story, in the frontier of another country, with the journalist in the role of the sensitive cowboy who couldn't let go of what was behind the story.