Dusk weaves in wilderness, myth and loyalty in a beautiful and suspenseful tale. I absolutely love Robbie Arnott's prose. Such beautiful descriptions, painting vivid pictures of the landscape and character details that gives you just enough to mold them into the narrative.

I loved the relationship between the twins, full of love, devotion and despair. Their upbringing is carefully woven into their adulthood, covering trauma and methods of coping.

Dusk, the centre piece of this story, was depicted almost as a rural myth. A single animal holding a community in fright. As the story reached its climax, I was clenching my jaws, unable to put the book down.

I felt a little bit unsettled by not knowing when in time it takes place, and at what location. There are hints and you can take guesses, but it's not exclusively stated in the book. The ending was abrupt and speculative, perhaps a bit too open for my personal taste. Still, it's a story I'm happy I got to read and I would happily recommend!

4.5★

I absolutely loved this book, my second by Robbie Arnott. His writing is just sublime. His descriptions of nature bring it to life on the page and as a reader you feel immersed in the world of the book. His attention to detail, even the minutiae, is incredible and in his portrayal of the twins, Iris and Floyd, every single little glance or movement counted in creating their characters and their relationship. Together they endeavour to survive in a world that seems pitted against them. Their background slowly unravels as their quest to find the puma, Dusk progresses. A novel full of breathtaking scenes, empathy, compassion and pathos, all delivered through such masterful storytelling, Robbie Arnott is a writer I will be recommending to all my friends.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Astra Publishing House for a copy in exchange for a review.

Historical fiction is usually not my favorite, but I was curious after reading some reviews about Dusk. So, the twins were great but I wish the author had given us the perspective of Floyd and had stayed a little bit longer with Lydia and her people. But those are small things compared with all the great ones this novel gave me. Great prose, Great setting. Interesting characters, specially their back story.
This was a 4 stars book for me, but that ending elevated it to a 4,5 stars. Love this sort of ending! Very cinematic.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Astrahouse for this ARC. I loved this story and haven't read a good adventure novel like this in awhile. I connected with the characters, loved the slow drip of their back-story and the resolution was satisfying. I liked that it left you guessing, which felt appropriate for how the entire novel was presented. The Tasmanian backdrop was described beautifully, and it just had me hooked instantly. Thanks again for the opportunity to read and share this great work!

This is a very beautiful adventure following a set of twins on a bounty hunt for a dangerous puma. The descriptions of the landscape are so luscious and real, Robbie creates a world so seamlessly and never makes it feel overly descriptive, but rather that you’re existing in this setting. Alongside real time, we explore the twins memories as children and the horrible lengths their parents went to in order to survive. Nowadays the twins have a negative reputation because of the generations before, making them outsiders who do not belong. They are not who their parents turned out to be. They love and have good intentions but their peers don’t see them this way and don’t care to get to know them. Their story parallels that of the puma who is hunted for its crimes committed out of pure survival. The more it is hunted, the further into a corner it’s backed and the more savagely it will act to protect itself. It’s a tight, small story and I wasn’t expecting this parallel of rage and survival. The twist and ending were very beautiful and had me on the edge of my seat.

Dusk is a lean, feral little novel. One that prowls quietly through its landscape before striking with sudden force. Set in an unnamed version of Tasmania, the novel follows Iris and Floyd Renshaw, twins carrying the weight of a family name they’d rather shed. Their journey from the lowlands to the rugged highlands is as much about survival as it is about escape. From poverty, from legacy, from themselves.

The land itself is Arnott’s true protagonist. His descriptions of forests, plains, and skies have a strange duality, rooted in realism but warped just enough to feel uncanny, as though you’re wandering through a mirror of the natural world. The presence of a rogue puma, tearing through farms and inspiring fear, becomes both a literal threat and a symbol of the wildness that refuses to be tamed, no matter how hard settlers try.

It’s a story about resilience, about the futility of trying to control what cannot be controlled, and about how landscapes shape the people who inhabit them. A concise, atmospheric novel that lingers like the aftertaste of smoke in the air.

Thank you to Astra House and NetGalley for the eARC!

I really enjoyed Dusk. The nature descriptions were absolutely beautiful. The plot kept me engaged. And the characters were incredibly interesting. I kept wanting to read, I flew through the book. I found that I was less interested in what would happen/how it would end. And was more so eager to stay in the landscape and its descriptions.

I'm curious to read more by Arnott and will definitely recommend this title!

Favorite book of the year for me so far. Unputdownable from start to finish. The story centers around twin siblings, Iris and Floyd, who set off on horseback into the highlands of what I believe is Tasmania, in search of work. Scattered throughout, we learn about the twins' background and how they've arrived in a situation where they need to find work to survive.

There is a bounty on the head of a puma, the locals named Dusk, who is killing all the livestock, as well as some unfortunate people who were out hunting her. As we watch the twins skirt around rugged, dangerous terrain and deal with shady unwelcoming people, the tension mounts to the last sentence. In contrast, the tenderness the twins show to each other is heartwarming, especially as we learn they were rarely shown any kindness themselves.

"She walked past the rows of horses, stopping to nicker at hers, to warm a palm on its cheek, before coming out into the light of the yard".

The prose is stunning and evocative throughout. I highly recommend reading this modern-day masterpiece. Many thanks to NetGalley and Astrahouse for this ARC.

Set in the Tasmanian highlands, Dusk is an atmospheric and compelling novel about the bond between siblings, belonging and survival. The story follows adult twins Iris and Floyd Renshaw who have always lived on the margins of society following their dysfunctional upbringing, leading a hardscrabble hand-to-mouth existence, but always fiercely loyal to each other. One day they arrive at a town where a hunt is on for a deadly puma called Dusk. They decide to chase the bounty offered, a decision that leads them into more danger than they could ever have imagined, and an emotional reckoning with their past. Exploring issues of family, predator and prey, ecological sustainability, greed and the legacy of colonialism, it’s a haunting and often poignant Tasmanian “western”, occasionally over written but always insightful and perceptive, with some nail-biting episodes.

My first time reading Robbie Arnott, I came to Dusk expecting an introspective human–nature duel at the heart of a puma hunt. While there are glimpses of that, the story leans toward a straightforward adventure with a predictable plot and an oddly young-feeling sibling dynamic for characters in their late thirties. Pleasant nature writing, but lacking the depth I always look for in a book; a mismatch between my expectations and the book’s tone and style. Perhaps best suited to younger readers drawn to adventure stories who are beginning to explore more literary territory, though the protagonists’ ages make that a curious fit.

Real Rating: 4.75* of five

Do you remember my review of Flames ? The debut novel from this author, I gave it all five stars six years ago. I'm still amazed how few people look at the tabs on the top bar, so it seems most of y'all missed my reviews of Limberlost and The Rain Heron, so I'm reposting them tomorrow as regular-blog posts. I'll carry on warbling about Author Arnott's prose and his evocations of a natural world I wish to hell I saw and felt as keenly as he does when I went outside, eg "They left at dawn, heading north-west, the steam of their horses cutting through the harshly cold air as they rode across frosted paddocks that soon gave way to plains of soft, snow-dusted buttongrass. The sun slanted onto their backs but did not warm them," from this story.

I badly want you to join me in the world of Arnott stans because he really puts in the work to make wonderful stories, in the older and current senses of that word. I think that merits our time and our treasure. The rewards for spending a bit of both in his quiet, unshowy company are many.

So, this latest novel: It's a Western, in the US sense, that follows twin brother and sister as they make a desperate attempt to eke out survival in a world harsher and less tolerant than we privileged computer-users have ever known. Offspring of a pair transported to distant Tasmania for absurdly trivial "crimes" (efforts to remain alive, really), the Renshaw twins had no chance of an "honest" start in life. They were trained up to thievery. Their long-since executed parents left them to fend for themselves and so they have.

Now, though, the life they were bred to lead has finally snapped shut the social trap of antisocial activity. Rob and cheat your neighbors long enough, they'll stop affording you the chance to do it. This is where we meet Iris and Floyd.

The desperation of hunger drives these parasites on the Body Politic to pursue a cockamamie plan to kill for a bounty a puma that's attacking shepherds in Tasmania's wild back-of-beyond meadows. How these very urban people will accomplish this...let's say I was never convinced it was a *good* plan, but everyone needs a plan, and some hope, for how to survive.
The fully risen sun built a morning of cold colour, of ripped clouds, sharp light washing onto wet wool and frosted fields. It afforded the twins a confidence that they hadn’t felt the previous day. With the sun unshielded, the mist absent, the land was robbed of menace. The river was no longer haunting but placid; the twisted trees appeared graceful and stoic in their contortions; the listless shepherds now seemed merely apathetic, rather than mysterious or threatening.

What strikes me in that passage is how one can read it as beautiful sentences; as simile on several levels; as Western-genre foreshadowing of developments. I always love writing that lets me in, that is roomy enough for my imagination to work on the beautiful imagery and its story direction. Like Cormac McCarthy before him, Author Arnott's playing an old instrument in a different way (though not a nihilistic one, I'll hasten to reassure those not fond of ol' Cormac's grimfests).

Iris and Dusk, the female protagonists of this story, and each driven by the actions of men to fight for their very survival against those men simply to sustain their lives. If that's not a metaphor for late-stage capitalism's effects on feminism, I do not know what is. It was not until I finished the book and sat mulling it over that I found this in its substance. Of course, I rest atop a Himalaya of old white male privilege so no tellin' how much faster women will see it...but there it is, Iris needs to survive, Dusk does too, they have to protect those unable to do so for themselves (Floyd's got what I expect is scoliosis and is crippled by it).

Their collision is inevitable. It is primal, cataclysmic. It is the conflict of colonials in a country that they've taken as their own (pumas are placental mammals, not one of which is native to Australia), and Author Arnott makes sure to give us this stonking clue in the form of Lydia's Aboriginal voice. It should be no surprise to anyone that Lydia, the bosslady of a crew of peat-cutters, is our voice given to those still more denied a place than colonializers' women are.

And yet, and yet...read through a US lens, this story's incongruities with actual Tasmanian colonial history (Outback cattle barons become sheep barons and never, for all I know, crudesced into the place) are all in service of Author Arnott's career-long cutting of Tasmania's story-cloth to suit the pattern of story he wants to tell. I myownself think he does a truly wonderful job of it; he tells his wonderful story, simple survival of females in a world colonized and exploited by men, with the enhancements and alterations of a talented imagination.

I'd argue it starts too slowly for its eventual pace, and permaybehaps the ending is "too open" for many readers (though not for me, I like the story to head off into the sunset without me when there's as much to think over as there is here), so I'm not quit at the full-five point.

Damn close, though. It's another exercise in superior storytelling by an established superior storyteller.

This is a beautifully written novel about nature and belonging.

Arnott spins a compelling adventurous story with some good twists in which Iris and Floyd, adult twins are hunting for a man-eating puma to receive a bounty.

The landscape is beautifully described and is an eerie setting full of ghosts of past creatures who occupied Tasmania before white prisoners were sent there.

An explosive ending - a good read.

This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

Twins, Iris and Floyd, live a rather nomadic life — traveling around for work. When they hear of a large bounty set for a puma (named Dusk by the locals) that is killing shepherds, they head towards the search area, reluctant and resigned to join the hunt.

While I'm still enamored with Arnott's The Rain Heron, Dusk was a steady and compelling story. Excavating Iris's and Floyd's characters, both as a sibling set and as individuals, proved to be the highlight of the book. Iris's point of view dominates the tale, alongside what is essentially a road trip, with the watchful but unseen eye of the puma hovering over the whole proceedings.

Arnott's ghostly setting, made of a cloud of stirred-up dust emulating a classic Western motif, makes for the perfect palette for scratching out the twins' back story directly onto the red earth. Timeless, meditative, and at times dreamlike, Dusk becomes a tale of redemption and sacrifice, beauty and ugliness, and life and death.

This is first and foremost an adventure story. I had hoped it would be more than that.

Arnott is a real storyteller and while the story of catching a puma (!) in Tasmania was exciting and the descriptions of nature beautifully done, overall I feel there was a bit too much story and too little behind it. For this reason, it failed to live up to my very high expectations based on his excellent prior novels.

The story is quite straightforward: two twins, out of work, decide to ride their horses into the highlands hoping to catch Dusk, a puma that has been wreaking havoc and killing multiple hunters, and pocket a handsome bounty. The two are wholly unprepared but thanks to advice given on the journey they close in on the animal.

I had a good time with it and would certainly recommend, but it won't be in my top 10 for this year.

Many thanks for the ARC via Netgalley

Like fellow Australian writers Charlotte McConaghy, Tim Winton, and Peter Carey, Robbie Arnott creates literary magic with his remarkable prose and powerful sense of place. Set in the rugged highland terrain of Tasmania, DUSK is the story of twins Floyd and Iris, loners trying to outrun the infamy of their parents' criminal history. They live on the edge of society and struggle to find work and peace. When they learn that a huge bounty is being offered to anyone who can kill a huge puma that has been terrorizing the small towns and farmers in the highlands, they set out to try their luck. DUSK is a slow burn, following them as they ride into a land they know nothing about and encounter landscapes and people that are completely alien. Arnott's gift, besides his language, is the ability to create a mythic story that could be taking place in many places and yet is unmistakably Tasmania. The story is both universal and very particular. Floyd and Iris are seeking redemption from their parents and their childhood on the run, peace in body and mind, and a way forward in the land of the living. Arnott slowly turns the screw, increasing the sense of foreboding as the twins interact with an unforgiving natural world and a variety of characters who can't be trusted. The legend of Dusk's ferocity haunts them, but she is not the only threat to their lives. If Cormac McCarthy had been a Tasmanian, he would have written novels like DUSK.

A gritty and yet magical "western" story of a brother and sister finding their way in a brutal, unforgiving, and beautiful (presumably Tasmanian) landscape. A unique and moving novel of love and endurance that's tightly, yet poetically, writte and that reminds me of NORTH WOODS...but also of works by Jonathan Evison, Frederick Manfred and A.B Guthrie.

I discovered DUSK (and the author) earlier this year on a road trip in Tasmania...and saw the book recommended at every bookstore I visited. I would have bought it there if I'd been traveling with more than a carry-on...and if I hadn't seen that this U.S. edition was coming. I don't understand why this gifted and versatile writer doesn't appear to have a large audience here. He certainly deserves it.

Much like the title puma, this book snuck up on me. (Sorry for the cheesy simile). I knew from my Australian buddies that this book was really good, which is why I requested it from NetGalley. But Dusk was an unexpectedly tender Western-esque novel.

Dusk takes place in the wilds of Australia, likely the Tasmanian Highlands. A puma, part of a group that was introduced to help manage wildlife in the highlands, has become more vicious and is attacking humans now too. A bounty is put up for her death, which draws groups of people to the wilds, include twins Iris and Floyd. Escaping a troubled past, they come seeking jobs and a new life. But they are not prepared for the task that lies ahead.

Without a doubt, Robbie Artnott is an excellent writer. The nature writing is top notch. I feel like I say this a lot about books but the setting here feels like a separate character. I fell in love with the landscape, just like Iris does. But Arnott also writes great characters. Iris and Floyd are complex characters. You slowly learn about their history and their relationship through flashbacks as the story progresses. It is beautifully handled.

This is a short book but packed with complexity. I loved the writing style and would recommend it for that alone. But if you're like me, you will also fall in love with the characters (even, maybe, the puma!).

Robbie Arnott’s Dusk is an atmospheric, slow-burn quasi-western set in Tasmania. If you’re looking for a lot of action, this may not be the book for you. But if you’re a fan of strong character work, beautiful descriptions of the natural world, and a slow unfolding, Dusk is a wonderfully immersive and rewarding work.

Two generations ago, a group of unthinking graziers in Tasmania brought in a handful of pumas to deal with an overpopulation of deer. As is often the case in such eco-system meddling, things go awry as the puma decided it was a lot easier killing off the slow and docile sheep than chasing after fleet deer, so the puma and their descendants had to be hunted to near extinction. Perhaps the last one (called “Dusk” by the locals) has now been driven ever deeper into the highlands and has turned to killing people rather than sheep. Twins Iris and Floyd hear about the large bounty and, desperate for work, head into the highlands despite having no rifle and no experience killing large cats. Their interactions with the land, other hunters, a group of indigenous people, and the Dusk itself will change their lives forever.

As noted, this is a slow-burn of a novel, and I mean that in the best sense; I loved the pace. Early on we’re given a lot of time to see how Iris and Floyd are with each other and with strangers and presented with long, lyrical descriptive passages of the highlands and their impact on Iris (nearly all the novel is filtered through her). The main narrative — the hunt — is further slowed or interrupted by side trips and by flashbacks to the twins’ childhood, a feral existence wandering with their thieving, murdering, alcoholic parents. That last part sounds entirely grim, and it mostly is, but moments of surprising tenderness and familial love still arise amidst the violent, hard-scrabble life. And while that life could have hardened them into amoral outcasts who turn to violence themselves, it instead engenders within them a deep bond of love and loyalty, both fierce and gentle, that protects them against how the world views them. That’s not to say their relationship is idealized; they get on each other’s nerves, they sometimes need space, they give each other the silent treatment. It’s a nuanced depiction of an abiding love. Love, in fact, is central to this story in surprising ways. The love between the twins, but also a love by Iris for the unfamiliar land they’re traveling through and that unexpected, really almost shocking, love for their parents, presented in some of the most moving passages of the novel.

The nuance of the relationship is echoed in the nuanced way Arnott handles questions of colonialism and indigenous culture. When Iris, an outcast herself, is speaking with Lydia, one of the peat cutters she works with for a while, she is shocked to be grouped by Lydia with the colonists as “you lot.” In that same conversation, Iris notes she had assumed that the peat wine she had drunk days earlier in town was “something you’ve been doing forever … and old tribal remedy.” But Lydia disabuses her of that notion, replying that, “We’ve used the peat forever, but selling it to you lot is a new thing … Gotta survive somehow.” In just a few lines Arnott manages to encapsulate how indigenous culture is romanticized, the ripple effect of colonization, and the inevitable loss and/or morphing of indigenous tradition.

Prose-wise the novel is simply beautifully written and in some ways reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, but not in any derivative sense or in a one-to-one stylistic match; it’s more atmosphere, setting, and a paradoxical rich sparseness of language. Arnott also does an excellent job of seeding moments that set up later scenes.

In the end, it’s hard not to root for these two, aching to “assist in an act that went beyond their own survival. A chance to fix a wrong in the world, and in the process somehow fix a wrong within themselves.” And hard as well not to root for Dusk herself, driven into a harsh corner of a world she had no choice in choosing. The cat is a beautiful, powerful creature. As is the novel named for her. Highly recommended.

Dusk is a book that reminded me a lot of Beastings by Benjamin Myers and The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt, which is to say, I enjoyed it a whole lot. Atmospheric and tense, this is a book that sucked me in and kept me on the edge of my seat throughout reading it, and it's convinced me that Robbie Arnott is one to read more by.

The story follows two twins, children of a pair of con artists, in 19th century (I think?) Australia. Desperate for work that no one will give them - on account of the aforementioned connection with con artists - they decide to head upland and take on the bounty for a man-eating puma. As you do.

Much like Beastings and The Sisters Brothers, a lot of this story is in the journey and the landscape around the characters. It's brought to life so vividly here that you can almost feel like you're there alongside the characters, treading in their footsteps as they hunt down the puma. That's the best kind of book, one where the world it inhabits feels almost like another character, one where you can tell how much care has gone into crafting that world too.

Of course, the characters are also compelling here. The twins with their past, which is slowly and steadily revealed to the reader, their unspoken wants and grudges, which come to bloom as the story unfolds. I mentioned that the world is meticulously constructed and vibrantly brought to life - the same is true of the characters who feel as though they might leap off the page at any moment. These are characters who you don't want to leave at any point, characters you want to know more about after the events of the book are over. The ending is a little open, as is the wont of litfic, but it suits it well still.

Overall, this is a book I would highly recommend and Robbie Arnott is definitely an author I'll be reading more of.

Dusk is an incredible book. The nature writing is so beautiful the land feels like a character itself. The sibling bond is one of the best I've seen written, and I couldn't ask for a better ending that what we got. Highly recommend!