Fairly, South-Australia in 1883.

The Wallace family and the whole surrounding community is struck by the disappearance of little Denny, a 6 year old child lost in the bush after a dust storm. The county sets out to find him. Despite one may think, this is not a thriller at all but a literary novel.

The human fauna of Fairly (inhabitants or people passing through) and its surroundings makes the richness of this book. The whole community is on fire, whatever the social level, natives or colons, quarrels between neighbors - the effort to search for this little boy delivered in pasture to the implacable sun of the desert is shared. The characters are extensively described, from Mary Wallace the matriarch to the vicar Mr. Daniels, to the Swedish couple of painters in exile, the author has taken care to take time to contemplate these characters, to sketch their personality and flaws. I also greatly appreciated the surreal and somewhat mythical place that the sun occupies in the eyes of the painter Karl, a reddish ball of fire that impresses as much as it fascinates.

This book is deeply contemplative, let it be said, it does not happen much, we are not eager to know the continuation. But we are taken in a contemplative languor perfectly encapsulated in the descriptive writing of McFarlane. Although I usually enjoy books like this, here I was a little too weighed down by this descriptive languor and I kind of stalled about three-quarters of the way through the novel.

Fiona McFarlane is a mastermind when it comes to inviting readers into her worlds. I couldn't put this one down!

A six-year-old went missing and an entire village seeking and searching for him. Australia 1883, farmers, mothers, indigenous trackers, children, artists, schoolteachers, widows, maids, and policemen all of them seeking and searching for the six-year-old boy who went missing meanwhile they didn't know while searching for him it would change their lives forever, confronting them with many things and situations that are not leading closer to Denny, if they continue to focus in their problems asides from the task.

The sun walk down was a great book, I love the description of the scenery, and what the characters went through made it even more enjoyable.

Thank you, NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, for the advanced copy of The Sun Walks Down in exchange for my honest review

A wonderfully atmospheric and compelling story of a small boy who gets lost during a dust storm in the Australian outback, and of the subsequent search for him. Six-year-old Denny Wallace goes missing and the whole community come together to find him. The book is set in in a small town in 1883, and is narrated through multiple voices and multiple perspectives. The narrative moves along slowly, in spite of the gathering tension, and thus the reader can get to know all the various characters who inhabit the town. It all felt to me to be a convincing and authentic portrait of outback life, and all the different personalities that have ended up there, many of whom remain more concerned with their own day-to-day lives even while they are part of the hunt. Each of them adds to the multi-layered description of the time and place. I found this compulsive reading indeed, and very much enjoyed it. This community became real to me and I was as concerned as anyone to find out what happened to the child. A really enjoyable read.

Lost interest about 25% in. Really interesting setting and great writing but the drama is very slow burning and there are just so many characters I couldn't get myself to go forward.

While I appreciated the writing within THE SUN WALKS DOWN, the story overall wasn’t for me. Maybe it was my timing and I wasn’t in the mood, but this book felt cold and it was difficult for me to get into. Again, maybe this was just me and my timing as the synopsis seemed really intriguing, but I struggled wanting to pick this hookup.

Not only was this a slow moving story, there were a lot of characters to keep track of. Not only that, a lot of nothing happened, giving this book no plot vibes. Forever questioning if this was on me, but I was having a hard time understanding the gist of the book.

Big thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Netgalley for the gifted copy.

Content warnings: racism, infidelity, animal death, death

This story is not about the boy missing in the Australian dessert. It is about the community of people concerned for him, their own history and how they respond to this event. If you enjoy delving into many characters and historical fiction, you should enjoy this.

The Sun Walks Down is a big novel about the adults who are involved in the search for six-year-old Denny who is lost in the Australian outback after a dust storm. Set in 1883, the intertwining chapters tell the story of newlyweds, shearers, constables, artists, mothers, and sisters who search for the child. Author Fiona McFarland provides an original twist on adults who mean well, but in so many ways caught up in their own needs and wants. Highly recommended for discussion groups who enjoy character-based historical fiction.

Six year old Denny gets lost in a dust storm in the Flinders Ranges. McFarlane uses this incident to shine a light on colonial society of the time, looking at the relationships between women and men, the monied and the poor, the indigenous people and the settlers, the police and the people, the church and the secular world, the choice between work and wifedom for young girls, and more.

All of this means that a fair amount of time is spent talking about peripheral characters at the expense of developing the story of Denny's experience. It almost feels like the author feels obliged to quickly switch to him for a bit, and then revert to talking about everybody else. After a while, she reached a point where the story of the search comes to its logical conclusion, but then she goes on to drag it out in barely credible fashion. This even reaches a point where, in the final scene, she introduces characters that were not mentioned anywhere before, and we are suddenly expected to care about. I think a good 20% of this book could have been pruned, and it would have been better for doing so.

Unexpectedly, this novel just grabbed me and pulled me in from the very first page. In a small farming and ranching town in drying-up 1880s South Australia, a young boy goes missing in a sandstorm. But this is really a probing and precise portrait of an entire community, divided by class, ethnicity, and race, and some of whom are searching for young Denny harder than others.

But the action here is slow and spiraling rather than linear and procedural. McFarlane artfully zooms out from Denny's panicked family across the parched landscape to etch character studies of dissolute wealthy landowners, dispossessed indigenous trackers, a sun-obsessed Swedish artist and his English wife, the local police constable and his distracted new bride. Their tracks through the desert and mountains intersect and diverge, with stunning descriptions of wild and bleak scenery, and especially the spectacular sunsets, whose saturated color was intensified by the Krakatoa volcanic eruption.

This repaid my patience with a slowly savored 19th-century narrative of the 19th century, and I hope this isn't overlooked for the Miles Franklin Award, and the Booker longlist.

Many thanks to Netgalley and FSG for providing me with a free ARC, in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

A lost boy and the community who is trying to find him. Very atmospheric.
Many thanks to FSG and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Set in the Outback of South Australia in 1883, a young boy, Denis, disappears during a sand storm. As the searchers look for Denis, the reader is introduced to a host of characters - family, neighbours, police, Aboringine trackers, other ranchers, townspeople, etc. This is a novel to savour.

For innovative language and evocative descriptions of the outback alone, this book is well worth the read. With the action that gathers around the search for Denny, it's a wonderful novel.

This book unfurls like the heat of a summer afternoon, and the tension sizzles. It keeps you guessing until the very end. A perfect thriller for summer.

Innovative structure is one of the things that attracts me to a novel, so I was beginning to think that the current fashion for a polyphonic construct was getting a bit stale--until I read Fiona McFarlane's "The Sun Walks Down." Set in motion by the disappearance of six-year-old Denny Wallace in a sandstorm in the outback town of Fairly, Australia in 1883, the novel gathers the voices and narratives of the town's many and varied inhabitants in a parallel to the way Constable Robert Manning gathers a search party to find Denny. By the novel's end, all these narrative strands have been skillfully woven together in a way that reveals not only what has happened to Denny, but the character and fate of the town itself. Everyone in this far-flung community is interconnected and has a part to play--from flighty bride Minna, Robert's new and less-than-steadfast wife, to her German immigrant mother Wilhelmina. Baumann, to Joanna Axam, owner of the aristocratic Thalassa ranch, who is coming to terms with the fact that she holds "so little sway in her own household, and so suddenly." There are the Swedish painter Karl Rapp and his English artist wife Bess, emblematic of those who have come to Australia seeking adventure and creative inspiration. There is the English vicar, Mr. Daniels, out of his depth in this wild and ungodly country, and Denny's father Mathew, also out of his depth but financially rather than spiritually. There is Mathew's aboriginal hired hand Billy Rough, born to the land but careful not to offend its white owners. There are Arab cameleers and city constables. And perhaps most indelibly, there is Denny's sister Cissy, a feisty 15-year-old who feels "like she's a pail in which there's a tiny hole, and through that hole the best of her will trickle out, unnoticed." I loved "The Sun Walks Down"--it reminded me of "Lonesome Dove" not only in its Western setting and quest motif, but in McFarlane's creation of a similarly fully-realized community and richly developed characters. Highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC of this title. in return for my honest review.

Set in Australia in the mid 1800’s, the reader is transported to that time and place. The descriptive and evocative prose really spoke to me. There is a large cast of characters, but Fiona McFarlane does an excellent job of describing the sometimes quirky lives of these so very different people without any confusion as to what their stories and roles in the dramas may be.
As the title suggests, the Australian sun is invoked quite often and in the most creative and dramatic ways.
I heartily recommend this book to all.

Thank you Net Galley.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

My favorite movie of all time (Jennifer Kent's magnificent psych-thriller/revenge drama The Nightingale) is set in colonial Australia. As silly as it might seem, I was eager to read this book because of that; I was excited to explore this setting through another story.

And explore this setting we did! This novel reminded me of Elizabeth Wetmore's Valentine in a way; it's a sort of atmospheric depiction of a time and place, exploring characters and relationships through their relation to a focal point event. The time and place are different. The event is different. But the effect on me was the same: I arrive at a place where I feel like I deeply know the place and its people, but I'm not sure if I really *loved* the ride. I just mildly liked it.

I do sometimes struggle with multi-perspective books and books with flowery descriptions, and this book is both, in a big way. BUT, plenty of people also love those exact things, and I think this would be a big hit for them.

Wow does the Australian setting come to life here. I want to read so many more books set in Australia thanks to Fiona McFarlane. This was both suspenseful and character driven. I'm not sure I could have cared any MORE than I did for that sweet little boy. I'm hoping this new release gets a lot of attention, because it is deserved!

When a young boy goes missing at the beginning of Fiona McFarlane’s masterful novel, The Sun Walks Down, the event kicks off a meditative exploration of a linked group of Europeans and Aboriginal people who live in the unforgiving land of South Australia. One might expect the disappearance to unite the community but McFarlane upturns our anticipations by showing us how misapprehensions, misunderstandings, and misguided thinking can lead people down very wrong paths.

The Sun Walks Down begins on what is an ordinary day for some and, for others, a day of celebration as a local girl marries the police constable she loves. Denny Wallace’s day is an ordinary one, at least at first. Denny is six years old and is, according to his acerbic older sister Cissy, a bit of a slacker. His other sisters and his mother know, however, that Denny doesn’t see the world the way the rest of his family does. Denny refuses to walk on the red hill close to their home and believes that malicious gods walk the earth in the nearby bush. So when Denny loses his way while collecting kindling, there’s no telling where the boy might go or what he might do. His fright makes it hard for his father, oldest sister, two police officers, and Aboriginal trackers to find him before the sun and dehydration do their worst.

The narration occasionally touches on Denny’s increasingly perilous progress through the bush as it bounces around to visit different characters. We spend a lot of time with angry Cissy, who sees almost everyone around her (including her parents) as idiots or dreamers. This anger doesn’t thwart Cissy from barging into all official efforts to find Denny. Instead, that anger spurs Sissy on, as she is the kind of person who does things because she believes that others either won’t or that they’ll mess it up. We also spend time with the young woman who got married that day, the somewhat spoiled and very lustful Minna. Minna would much rather spend time with her new husband instead of sending him off to traipse through the bush after Denny. Her husband’s absence sends her back to her proud German mother’s home in search of company. We also are treated to the attitudes of the equally proud Sergeant Foster, who firmly believes that he knows exactly where to find the missing boy and that anyone who says differently is a sadly misguided idiot.

The Sun Walks Down is a beautifully written story, for all its tensions and the prejudices it uncovers. I loved how McFarlane built the town and environs of the fictional Fairly, South Australia—especially the fully-realized characters she created to populate that landscape. For all that they inhabit the same patch of earth, they all seem to live very separate lives from each other. No one is fully open with anyone else, even the supposedly enamored pair of artists who’ve arrived in the area to paint the sky. Usually when an author creates a multi-voiced mosaic novel like The Sun Walks Down, there are parts that seem dull compared to others. It’s difficult to juggle a cast this large without some parts dragging or just less interesting. That is very much not the case with The Sun Walks Down; all of it fascinated. I felt like I was out in the bush with them, thirsty and sunburned, or cooped up in a ranch house where the younger generation have taken over everything and only stop by with occasional news. This novel is simply brilliant.

It’s late summer 1883 in southern Australia and six-year-old Denny is missing. Out on his own during a sudden dust storm he loses his sense of direction and fails to return home in the evening. Word spreads quickly to the nearby town of Fairly where the police along with local trackers head out to join the search already started by Denny’s father. The story of the next few days unfolds through the voices of the residents of Fairly as they grapple with the landscape, their relationships, and themselves.
Author Fiona McFarlane has crafted a quiet, simple story whose heart and soul resides in the characters, including the role of the Australian outback. It took me a few chapters to really get drawn in and while there wasn’t a singular moment that hooked me I found myself quickly moving through this novel. The many characters have such different voices and perspectives, it was entertaining to bounce between them as the story went on. Their experiences cover a range of topics including gender, race, religion, and colonialism which enrich the seemingly simple story of a lost boy.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advance copy of this book!