Clarkeby Holly Throsby
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9781760878740
Publication Date: November 1, 2022
Pages: 406
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
On a hot morning in 1991 in the regional town of Clarke, Barney Clarke (no relation) is woken by the unexpected arrival of many policemen: they are going to search his backyard for the body of a missing woman.
Next door, Leonie Wallace and little Joe watch the police cars through their kitchen window. Leonie has been waiting six years for this day. She is certain that her friend Ginny Lawson is buried in that backyard.
But the fate of Ginny Lawson is not the only mystery in Clarke. Barney lives alone in a rented house with a ring on his finger, but where is Barney's wife? Leonie lives with four-year-old Joe, but where is Joe's mother?
Clarke is a story of family and violence, of identity and longing, of unlikely connections and the comedy of everyday life. At its centre stands Leonie Wallace, a travel agent who has never travelled, a warm woman full of love and hope and grief, who would do anything in the world for Joe.
This is Throsby’s third book, and, I think, the … not weakest, but least complicated, in terms of story. It’s also probably the most accessible in terms of vernacular; a few things were purely Aussie, but understandable in context. I didn’t need my handy-dandy MT-dictionary to decipher cultural references or some of the more obscure slang.
Unlike in the previous books, that where the stories were more centred on the community, Clarke focuses on two people, neighbours but strangers, both of whom are deeply damaged people after suffering significant tragedies. When the police show up to Barney’s newly rented home with a warrant to search for the body of a missing woman who lived there 6 years previous, Barney is forced out of his shell, and he begins to interact with his neighbours Leonie.
Throsby weaves the memories of each of their tragedies throughout the narrative, so that the real stories behind each unfurl every so slowly, as the search for Ginny Lawson’s body continues on. It’s a bit maddening, but worthwhile at the end as she brings everything together. It’s not a story with a happy ending, but it at least ends on a hopeful note. Throsby does something a little different, too, as she leaves the reader with more information than the characters have, and I think it works.
The tag line on the cover isn’t really good marketing; this really isn’t a mystery. But it is a very good story, that just happens to center on the search for a body.