An unsettling novel - or connected stories- about an unnamed writer and an unnamed and vanishing town. This is quite stylistic and will appeal to fans of literary fiction.

An Outback "Nightvale"

While there is a plot of sorts here, and while the story does ultimately drive to a vaguely fantastic conclusion, this book struck me as being more like an interlinked series of elegant essays and sort fictions. The frame is that our unnamed nebbishy hero narrator is situated in a small town and is writing about the "disappearing" towns of the central west of New South Wales. The town is also literally disappearing around him, (which is the plot part). Meanwhile, though, our hero is just walking about picking up stories, meeting people, and observing the oddities of this small outback Nightvale

So, we ride an endless circular bus route on a bus that goes nowhere and never has any passengers. We meet a community radio DJ with a show that has no listeners. We learn about an entirely imaginary underground metal band, and some eerie mystery music. We attend the annual town celebration that always ends in choreographed destruction, we go to the seasonal brawl/dance, and we wait for a train to run past the abandoned town train station. Our hero befriends the local pub owner who offers a sounding board and sort of Greek chorus as events pile up, and he finds a girl friend who's even more laid back, lost, and passive than he is. This is less alien/Twilight Zoney than the American podcast phenom that is "Welcome to Nightvale", but we're in the same general slipstream territory.

This isn't a straightforward novel, since it's episodic and heads off in all sorts of idiosyncratic and slightly unbalanced directions. Not that much "happens", although lots of things do happen. The book is literary with a capital "L", but with enough modesty and low key humor that you don't want to slap the author in the head. Indeed, the odd balance of low-key gloom, and deadpan dread struck me as just the sort of postmodern playfulness that might tickle the fancy of a jaded reader.

You can do a lot with the symbolism, and go crazy with allegory and metaphor analysis. Well, have at it. I found the book mostly interesting as a think piece about "the outsider ", since no one comes from anywhere or is going anywhere, but also isn't even really in or of the town. Toward the end our hero and his girl friend head to "the City", and it turns out they don't belong there either. How do you belong and what does it mean to belong? The people in this book have no clue, but the author does and he's willing to nudge you in the right direction.

So, this was a fun, unusual, and ultimately very satisfying and odd find. I've read lots of books recently that feature mysterious holes, (think about that for a moment); this was the most engaging and rewarding.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Intriguing plot in this novel, but not quite enough to hold my interest. Author Prescott writes superbly well, but for me at least the spark wasn't there.

TWO-CENT TUESDAY

Below are a few (somewhat) brief, $.02 opinions about several books I've read or listened to recently but don't have time to review in full. Their appearance in this recurring piece generally has little to nothing to do with merit. Many of these books I enjoyed as much or more than those that got the full court press. I hope you'll consider one or two for your own TBR stack if they strike your fancy whether they struck mine or not.

Interesting, but Disconnect:

The Town, by Shaun Prescott

I really wanted to love this one by Aussie Shaun Prescott, and for the most part I did. In a super cool premise, Prescott's unnamed protagonist shows up in a town in the rural Outback. He's writing a book about Australian towns that are disappearing. Then the town he's in begins to literally disappear as large holes to nowhere show up. People who get near them are sucked in never to be seen again. They keep getting bigger. It's about connectivity and belonging and ostracism and many other interesting concepts. Unfortunately, the conclusion also seemed to disappear. I wasn't entirely sure where Prescott ended up with this one. Maybe that was the point. Maybe I missed the point. There's great writing here, I was often transfixed, but ultimately the conclusion lost me.

Describing himself as “writing a book about the disappearing towns in the Central West region of New South Wales”, the unnamed narrator of The Town states he “was probably not a writer”. This is definitely an unusual way to open a book.

Despite not being a writer, the narrator keeps writing about the unusual town he finds himself in. There are streets that twist and turn ultimately ending nowhere. It was hard for me to not feel the same about the book. And then I had a flash of inspiration! The Town is a metaphor for today’s current lack of real meaningful human interaction. We are all on a road to nowhere. Or a bus driver who never has any passengers. Or a band member where bands are forbidden to play. Both are also characters in the book.

As a mystery/thriller genre reader, The Town was a refreshing change in focus—once I figured out its point. It reminded me of Camus’ The Plague or my childhood fascination with art films. The circus clown always stood for the “laughing despite your troubles”. That type of analyzing each scene for hidden meanings is required here too.

Don’t read this book if you want a straightforward plot and easily recognizable heroes and villains. But if you are in the mood for an atmospheric puzzler on a completely different level, give this book a try. 4 stars!

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

This is a very strange book – strange and strangely compelling. The plot, such as it is, concerns an unnamed narrator who arrives in the eponymous town to gather material for a book he is writing, a book about the disappeared towns in the Central West of New South Wales, Australia. Although at first sight the town seems to be a normal, ordinary town, it soon becomes clear that it is perhaps not so ordinary. For a start, it seems to have no past. Does it have a future? Certain surreal aspects to the town start to build up and a claustrophobic and unsettling atmosphere begins to pervade the narrative. What does it all mean? Well, I’m not sure – but that didn’t stop me thoroughly enjoying it. An allegory, perhaps, for contemporary dislocation and displacement? Existential angst. The apocalypse? Modern-day alienation? Or just a story about a weird town in Australia? I don’t think it really matters as the writing carried me along, with its cast of slightly “off” characters, its bus that never has any passengers, its train that goes nowhere – and never comes back. Little details add up to a vaguely menacing and uncomfortable whole that is near enough to the everyday banality of any regular town to be recognisable but which seems to veer more and more into unreality as the book progresses. An original and absorbing read.

Reading The Town, a debut novel of existential dread, was a dreamlike experience. An unnamed writer somehow moves to an unnamed town in order to chronicle the disappearing towns of New South Wales. Inhabited by eccentrics who don't seem to have any relationship to one another, this town provides a paradox in that there appear to be many vital businesses, but no customers, no patrons of the many restaurants and fast food outlets. Two shopping malls. The writer claims he's writing about disappearing towns, but not "this" one. While not terribly long, I found it somewhat of a slog and felt it could have been much effective had it been shorter.

A stunning and haunting debut novel, The Town follows an unnamed writer as he explores the mysterious disappearances of small Australian towns. Part social commentary, part metaphor for the desolation of self, this novel confronts issues such as drug use, depression, and otherism. The Town is an outstanding debut that will stick with the reader long after the book is finished!

A special thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book seems to be described heavily via comparisons with other more famous works. It’s understandable, because here it wouldn’t just be a marketing ploy, this is a genuinely difficult book to describe on its own. If I had to make comparisons, there are aspects of it that are reminiscent of Cook’s work, not so much Fear is the Rider, more like Wake in Fright. Same creepy claustrophobia of it all. But the main reason is that this is a story that’s more mood driven than plot driven. There is, of course, a plot, and it has to do with a man who moves to small town in Central Australia, specifically Central West of New South Wales, to, ostensibly, write a book about the disappearing small towns of the area. But the book stalls and his days are spent working in a supermarket and encountering and interacting with the variously eccentric locals. Eventually the town he’s in begins disappearing as well and he thinks it might be time to move to a city. I know, it isn’t much to go on, but like I said, this isn’t a very plot driven work. The mood though is consistent and hypnotic in a way, there’s a pervasive atmosphere of hopelessness, isolation and alienation. There’s a nearly unmanageable divide between the city and the towns, society structed in such a way that makes integration somewhere between very difficult and impossible. In a way, it works as a commentary on the social shift that occurred in the last century, wherein the population found themselves flocking to the large cities and small towns became no longer viable. In a way, it works as a commentary on the ever so uneven distribution of wealth and resources. But mainly it’s such an emotionally vivid description of being stuck, of not mattering, of not belonging to the world around you and being aware that the world has no use for you, different ways of being homeless and so many ways of being alone. Netgalley classified it under a variety of genres, but none of them are quite accurate, this novel defies such categorization. Yes, the town might be disappearing by something like supernatural means, but this isn’t a work of supernatural. Yes, there are mysterious goings on, but it isn’t a mystery. It’s more like a profoundly existential strange dark trip of a novel. It’s relentlessly gloomy and profoundly unsettling. It reads like (and has all the magnetic crippling hold) of a strange nightmare. One that upon waking you can remember and analyze and recognize the geopolitical themes and social connotations. Which is all to say that it’s a difficult book to recommend and very much an acquired taste. I enjoyed it, it suited my mood at the time and the cloudy rainy day outside provided a perfect backdrop for it. Not for everyone, but those who’ll like it, will probably like it quite a lot. At the very least it’s different and original and well written. Quite an auspicious debut. And technically, should count as an international read, although the metaphysical places this novel speaks of are not really bound by geography. The rest is a matter of personal preferences. Strange, haunting, bleak. Read at your discretion. Thanks Netgalley.

A solid debut. The author handles the darkness well and addresses otherness and the treatment of the indigenous people well both straightforwardly as well as metaphorically. But there was perhaps a bit too much going on here.