Australian Anna Krien’s background is in journalism and it shows in her first, fierce foray into fiction. ‘Act of Grace’ is issue-driven: we get PTSD and domestic violence, rape and torture, dementia and racism – all before we reach Uluru …
The three main story-lines of Toohey and Gerry, part-Indigenous Australian Robbie and her family, and Nasim play out across three continents. They bear upon each other only glancingly, though if Robbie and Nasim’s friendship is to be imagined beyond the span of the book, Nasim will have to come clean about the circumstances of her flight from Iraq. Damaged Iraq vet Toohey’s anger looks to have cost him his wife and son; Gerry in effect flees to the US, where he receives an accelerated life education, and perhaps a chance of reconciliation. The young Robbie too is obliged to think hard about who she is and who she wants to be.
I’d speculate, then, that what links these characters is the way they are all trying to make sense of their lives, to set themselves on a stable footing, after experiences that have been somewhere between challenging and horrific. This doesn’t make for a laughter-filled read, but this is not a gory thriller but a high-class literary novel. I hope there’s more to come.
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