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Darren Williams won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1994 for his acclaimed novel Swimming in Silk, and here he continues his mastery of the evocative and the mysterious. The story has echoes of Australia's greatest unsolved mystery, the Ayers Rock tragedy when baby Azaria Chamberlain vanished, apparently taken by a dingo. In Angel Rock, it is 1969 and an Apollo spacecraft is on its way to the moon. But this feels light years away from the tiny, secluded town surrounded by swamp gum scrub and kangaroos, where Flynn, a child of four, suddenly disappears without trace. The valleys are riddled with old mineshafts; foxes or dogs could have carried him off or he could have drowned in the river. His brother, 12-year-old Tom Ferry, was with Flynn but after the pair have been missing for over a week, he turns up alone, unable to recall what happened to the younger sibling. Tom could only remember 'the dreams and the presence of something crouching in the darkness, something with teeth, man or beast he couldn't tell - waiting, watching'. Williams effortlessly captures the essence of childhood, the feeling of there being oceans of time, of time passing incredibly slowly. Children run shoeless through endless summer days. But the idyll is abruptly shattered when they are caught up in something evil, something emanating from the tangle of the grown-ups' emotions. A short while afterwards, in a Sidney suburb, Gibson, a detective, finds the body of Darcey, a teenage girl also from Angel Rock who has committed suicide. Are there any links or are the two incidents completely unrelated? An entry in the dead girl's diary from when she lived near Tom Ferry reveals: 'Something's watching me from the trees.' In the search for answers, many of the secrets of Angel Rock come unravelled. The past lives and traumas of Tom's parents and Darcey's parents are revealed as are other deaths and obsessions. Even Gibson, who travels to Angel Rock to investigate, finds that the town brings to a head his own unresolved family nightmare. The mysteries deepen the further you read. Williams deftly reveals how long-hidden actions in the past have an inevitable bearing on the future. This is the work of a fine classical novelist whose writing imbues the physical landscape with all the highly charged emotion of a Thomas Hardy or a Thoreau. (Kirkus UK)
The disappearance of a four-year-old boy in the menacing bush country is the catalyst for this engrossing melodrama-its author's second novel, and winner of the Australian/Vogel Literary Award. Williams focuses initially on 12-year-old Tom Ferry, the de facto guardian of his younger stepbrother Flynn-and the object of both parental scorn and his own agonized guilt when, upon returning home after a day at work with his stepfather (Flynn's father), Tom's attention is distracted by a wounded kangaroo, and Flynn is nowhere to be seen, shortly thereafter fully lost. A widespread search for both missing boys brings Gibson, a burnt-out Sydney detective, to Angel Rock, after Tom had stumbled alone into a neighbor's yard, exhausted and distracted, unable to remember anything beyond hazy impressions of a "figure without a face" lurking in the trees, watching the two brothers. Williams squeezes maximum tension from this arresting premise, expanding the focus to explore the histories of several variously connected Angel Rock families, and linking Flynn's disappearance to the suicides of two local girls: one a runaway to Sydney, the other the daughter of a fundamentalist family whose secrets are concealed in the religious colony known as New Eden. The novel also offers an appealing picture of the likable Tom Ferry's conflicted approach to maturity (his scenes with a grandmotherly storekeeper and with the adolescent daughter of a stoical police sergeant are especially striking), which balances and helpfully vitiates the cliched portrayal of Gibson, an alcoholic loner pursued by his own family ghosts and personal demons. And the image of the craggy landmark for which Angel Rock is named-a lonely eminence where spirits seem to walk-draws the story's sprawling webwork of myths and legends, secrets and lies to it like a powerful magnet. Another in the growing list of intriguing and accomplished novels from Down Under, and a welcome US debut. (Kirkus Reviews)
Daily Mail
‘A compelling page-turner where powerful, poetic writing creates a pressing sense of menace.’ --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Darren Williams won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1994 for his acclaimed novel Swimming in Silk, and here he continues his mastery of the evocative and the mysterious. The story has echoes of Australia's greatest unsolved mystery, the Ayers Rock tragedy when baby Azaria Chamberlain vanished, apparently taken by a dingo. In Angel Rock, it is 1969 and an Apollo spacecraft is on its way to the moon. But this feels light years away from the tiny, secluded town surrounded by swamp gum scrub and kangaroos, where Flynn, a child of four, suddenly disappears without trace. The valleys are riddled with old mineshafts; foxes or dogs could have carried him off or he could have drowned in the river. His brother, 12-year-old Tom Ferry, was with Flynn but after the pair have been missing for over a week, he turns up alone, unable to recall what happened to the younger sibling. Tom could only remember 'the dreams and the presence of something crouching in the darkness, something with teeth, man or beast he couldn't tell - waiting, watching'. Williams effortlessly captures the essence of childhood, the feeling of there being oceans of time, of time passing incredibly slowly. Children run shoeless through endless summer days. But the idyll is abruptly shattered when they are caught up in something evil, something emanating from the tangle of the grown-ups' emotions. A short while afterwards, in a Sidney suburb, Gibson, a detective, finds the body of Darcey, a teenage girl also from Angel Rock who has committed suicide. Are there any links or are the two incidents completely unrelated? An entry in the dead girl's diary from when she lived near Tom Ferry reveals: 'Something's watching me from the trees.' In the search for answers, many of the secrets of Angel Rock come unravelled. The past lives and traumas of Tom's parents and Darcey's parents are revealed as are other deaths and obsessions. Even Gibson, who travels to Angel Rock to investigate, finds that the town brings to a head his own unresolved family nightmare. The mysteries deepen the further you read. Williams deftly reveals how long-hidden actions in the past have an inevitable bearing on the future. This is the work of a fine classical novelist whose writing imbues the physical landscape with all the highly charged emotion of a Thomas Hardy or a Thoreau. (Kirkus UK)
The disappearance of a four-year-old boy in the menacing bush country is the catalyst for this engrossing melodrama-its author's second novel, and winner of the Australian/Vogel Literary Award. Williams focuses initially on 12-year-old Tom Ferry, the de facto guardian of his younger stepbrother Flynn-and the object of both parental scorn and his own agonized guilt when, upon returning home after a day at work with his stepfather (Flynn's father), Tom's attention is distracted by a wounded kangaroo, and Flynn is nowhere to be seen, shortly thereafter fully lost. A widespread search for both missing boys brings Gibson, a burnt-out Sydney detective, to Angel Rock, after Tom had stumbled alone into a neighbor's yard, exhausted and distracted, unable to remember anything beyond hazy impressions of a "figure without a face" lurking in the trees, watching the two brothers. Williams squeezes maximum tension from this arresting premise, expanding the focus to explore the histories of several variously connected Angel Rock families, and linking Flynn's disappearance to the suicides of two local girls: one a runaway to Sydney, the other the daughter of a fundamentalist family whose secrets are concealed in the religious colony known as New Eden. The novel also offers an appealing picture of the likable Tom Ferry's conflicted approach to maturity (his scenes with a grandmotherly storekeeper and with the adolescent daughter of a stoical police sergeant are especially striking), which balances and helpfully vitiates the cliched portrayal of Gibson, an alcoholic loner pursued by his own family ghosts and personal demons. And the image of the craggy landmark for which Angel Rock is named-a lonely eminence where spirits seem to walk-draws the story's sprawling webwork of myths and legends, secrets and lies to it like a powerful magnet. Another in the growing list of intriguing and accomplished novels from Down Under, and a welcome US debut. (Kirkus Reviews)
Daily Mail
‘A compelling page-turner where powerful, poetic writing creates a pressing sense of menace.’ --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
See all Product Description
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