'The broken shore' by Peter Temple

A friend lent me  ‘The Broken Shore’ by Peter Temple as one of his favourites, and it comes highly lauded – Sunday Star bestseller, awards, the challenge on the title page ‘Read page one and I challenge you not to finish it’.

The first pages were promising – evocative images, and – it contained dogs, poodles. I recognised my own poodle in the description of the way they move, bounce, experience the world.

Yet, it was a difficult start. Reading the first 50 or so pages I was still waiting to be gripped, to be hooked – I read those first 50 pages in several sittings, it was no challenge to put the book down. I was confused, a bit annoyed, couldn’t quite work out why.

The book is full of dialogue. The main character has obviously gone through crisis, yet the reader doesn’t know what happened. That back story is fed in snippets, and mainly in conversation. That was what irritated me until I got into it – I was listening to conversations where the people having the conversation knew the back story, yet those conversations didn’t make much sense to me.

The more I read, the more puzzle pieces fell into place. Temple is not painting a pretty picture of life in remote Australia. Institutionalised racism, cover-ups – the main character disheartened and disillusioned at being used as a pawn in a game he doesn’t want to play.

The sense of futility shines through, of running against a brick wall, yet – dogged determination prevails. After telling my friend that I wasn’t sure yet that I was going to finish the book I picked it up one last time – and my day was done. No I could not put it down again – I finished it and sent a text – ‘do you also own the sequel?’ 

Yes. Highly recommended. From the beginning the skilful use of language is a delight, and once I got over the frustration of not having a clue what was going on I loved it, and look forward to ‘The Truth’.