Slow burner that would justify a second reading

COAL CREEK<br><b>Alex Miller</b><br><i>Allen & Unwin</i>
COAL CREEK<br><b>Alex Miller</b><br><i>Allen & Unwin</i>
Alex Miller is an Australian writer with a number of awards to his credit.

His latest book is narrated by ''Bobby'' Blue, a young Queensland bushman with an unwillingness to speak unless he has something of importance to say; he's learned this from his even more laconic father. He knows the country around the tiny community of Mount Hay almost as well as the Aboriginal people, and is more at home out under the stars than amongst the townsfolk.

Nevertheless he can read people well, and doesn't quickly judge another's actions. He's learned this from his mother, to whom he often refers things, even though she's been dead for some years. He also has an instinctive sense about the way animals behave, both the domesticated and the wild.

Blue's integrity and honesty are part of what leads to the tragedy in this story. When the long-serving local policeman retires, a man who has mostly let things sort themselves out, he's replaced by Daniel Collins. Collins brings his wife and two young daughters with him, but he's not at home in this part of the world, being from ''the coast''.

His wife, though she tries to engage with the women of the community, soon finds she's on a different wavelength. However, along with her older daughter, Irie, she teaches Bobby to read. The innocent friendship of this 20-year-old man and 13-year-old girl eventually arouses the wrong-headed suspicions of the girl's parents, and brings about violent and unwanted consequences.

Bobby's somewhat untutored narrative style is simple and slightly stilted, and winds back and forth between the past and the present, as well as giving us dark hints of what will unfold in the future. In the long lead-up of the first section of the book it seems as if nothing of substance is ever going to happen, though the writing is always subtle and atmospheric, and the sense of people and place is vividly conveyed.

The shorter second part is where things do move, at an increasingly suspenseful pace, and all the clues carefully laid out early on weave into the anguish of the climax. The more I consider it, the more I think this is a book that will bear a second, more relaxed, reading.

- Mike Crowl is a Dunedin writer, musician and composer.

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