Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2022
Cover design Luke Causby/Blue Cork
Whilst this is a rural crime fiction novel, it is also a striking and astute observation of Australian society in the 1970s. Set in a fictitious cane region in Queensland, the story centres on the investigation into the disappearance of a local teenager.
This crime is particularly potent in the community as another teenage girl had disappeared 10 years earlier, her body eventually washing up in the mangroves.
The setting for this story, both in time and place, is highly significant. Not only do we have a portrait of rural life in all its rawness and variety (the good, the bad and the ugly), but it is at a time of social and political change in Australia – think Vietnam War and Springbok tour protests, the coming to power of Gough Whitlam’s government, revolutions in women’s rights and shifts in sexual mores.
These changes butt against a conservatism that fears and resists change. Sexism and racism are rife and overt. Strangers to town are met with suspicion and often derision and threats of harm. Difference and different thinking are abhorred and found threatening. Violence is an answer to much of this change, along with dismissal of new-fangled ideas and new roles for women.
And so it is that in this story, crime visits a relatively newly settled family, the McClymonts, with the disappearance of their teenage daughter Janet.
A new publican comes to town with his mouthy daughter Raelene whose brazen disregard for adult authority challenges the town’s values.
A long-haired cheese cloth wearing teacher Eamonn Sullivan challenges the norm with his political activism and exposes some of his students to The Little Red School Book. Detective Sergeant Patterson comes from ‘down south’ to investigate the crime and is later joined by Senior Constable Carmel Maitland, who not only declines to make him cups of tea but gets about in a pants suit!
It’s lot for the hard drinking rough heads of the town to accept, but equally as hard for the conservative old-time families who’ve worked the cane fields for many years.
The burning of the cane is a central motif in this tale. There is a cleansing quality to this burn akin to ritualistic fire. Some folk have delayed the burn in deference to Barbara McClymont, who has searched over and over for her daughter’s body and fears finding it as charred remains after the cane is burnt.
Interspersed with a third person narrative that pushes the crime investigation along at a satisfying pace, is the voice of Arthur, a stalwart local who acts somewhere between an oracle and a Greek Chorus. He informs us of happenings, he paints characters in great detail, he comments about how the community works and generally gives us insight into the dark histories of the towns of Kalliope and Quala and the lands around them. This is a clever literary device, deftly handled by the author.
There is so much to speak about with this novel, and I have merely touched on some of its qualities, themes and plot aspects; it’s brimming with ideas and references to the times and the way Australian society works now and worked then. It’s an engrossing read equally for its crime plot and its invitation to the reader to examine our past and present.
I found The Cane utterly gripping and, perhaps because I was in my 20s at the time the story was set, particularly personally connecting. Younger readers than I will, however, find much here to think about, as well as a pacy, well written rural crime fiction novel.
Thank you to Allen & Unwin for my review copy and to Maryrose Cuskelly for the opportunity to chat about the work.