“There are things out there worse than sharks.”
The Windy Season
Sam Carmody
Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781760111564
Description:
A young fisherman is missing from the crayfish boats in the harsh West Australian coastal town of Stark. There’s no trace at all of Elliot, there hasn’t been for some weeks and Paul, his younger brother, is the only one who seems to be active in the search. Taking Elliot’s place on their antagonistic cousin’s boat, Paul soon learns how many opportunities there are to get lost in those many thousands of kilometres of lonely coastline.
Fierce, evocative and memorable, this is an Australian story set within an often wild and unforgiving sea, where mysterious influences are brought to bear on the inhospitable town and its residents.
My View:
“There are things out there worse than sharks.”
This book had a charm and appeal that slowly slowly makes a space for itself in your head and your heart. Is it the familiar countryside, the mystery, the characterisations, the seductive narrative that weaves subtle tentacles around you insisting you read more and more?
I think it is combination of all the above plus a level of honesty and transparency of writing that has an appeal all of its own.
Mystery and coming of age narrative, a great combination; I celebrated the point where Paul realised his parents were people too – that they had personalities, flaws, emotions, lives… responsibilities…not just to their children.
A great debut, I only had one niggling problem – and that was about how the dialogue was presented on the page – the lack of speech/quotation marks to identify a conversation often had me re reading paragraphs to make sense of things. Speech was identified by the use of “said”; Jules said, Michael said, Paul said… too many “saids” for me. Maybe I am old fashioned, used to a certain style of grammar- this method I found distracting.
PS I liked that how this book shone a spotlight on the current social/health issue – ice/meth drug use.
Reading, Writing and Riesling 
What do you think of fictional towns Carol? I’ve been looking at The Windy Season and I love WA-set books. So I was interested in your review but the moment you wrote ‘WA town of Stark’ I thought, oh, bleh!! It would distract me before I even began the story.
It is distracting Lily – I spent the whole book trying to guess which town it was🙂other novels – it hasn’t bothered me- as I haven’t been familiar with the areas. I think the name of this one Stark just didn’t work for me either, too harsh and not anything like jour fishing towns: Wedge, Seabird,Lancelin etc I actually enjoy having local locations in books – fictional places/streets /pubs ect within them is …I think…that works ok
It does have a certain charm though Lilly I do recommend the read if you can let go of the need to work out where this town is
I know exactly what you mean about the quotation marks (or some setting-off), Carol. I’ve read a few books that didn’t do that, and it can be distracting. That said, though, this does sound like it has a great sense of place, and that appeals to me. Glad you found lots to like about it.
I did enjoy Margot – the book managed to pack a lot into it- but I kept trying to guess the location of this fictitious town 🙂