An audio book.
Snip Freeman, a wandering artist, 30, received a cheque and a note saying "Hunt him down". 10 days later she's in her new car, Dave (30) driving her across Australia to Alice, having answered her advert. He's an archeologist who's not had sex for 2.5 years. She has sex with him and leaves him in Alice going 650 miles further, where people know her, to find Bud. Snip knows the Aboriginal ways.
We learn that the money and instructions were in her gran's will. She went to a convent school and got top marks. She could have done law or medicine. She only paints men. Her mother Helen is based in London. She designs lighting for big buildings. Bud (Richard) is her father. He left home with her when she was 7. She went to school in Aboriginal lands as a boy until she was found out. Bud returned her to Sydney and became religious, not going out with women. Snip finds him. He does something that upsets Aboriginals and wants to leave for a while. He wants her to go with him. In the past she'd done bad things to attract his attention (she'd worked for an escort agency, and worse). She doesn't want to turn down this invitation though she'd heard that Dave was looking for her, which excites her.
They run out of fuel in the desert. They wait days for someone to pass by. She has the chance to kill a wallaby but can't do it. She asks her father why he left her mother. He says that her mother needs to tell her that. He gives her a letter from Dave that he's been keeping from her, a love letter.
He tells her that he found she was pregnant by one of his colleagues. He used a screwdriver to give her an abortion, which is why he's never forgiven himself. He walks off. She's saved. Dave is at the hospital. Helen pays for the search to continue after the police abandon hope.
She and Dave move to Tazmania. She gets used to sleeping with someone day after day. Bud's not dead after all. He finds her, then walks into the sea. She tells Dave not to rush in and save him.
The language is attractive -
- Snip opens a door, "letting the night rush into the room"
- She sees a white carrier bag flapping "like a happy ghost"
- Someone talks "like a party host trying to fill the silence"
- a person does something "like a doctor who can do no more"
- "like a tourist who's snuck into an empty church"
- a calf in the road with "the affronted look of someone caught looting"
Other reviews
- Louise Truscott (it has a timeless quality. It could have been written last year or 50 years ago. The prose is fluid and lyrical. But that appears to be where all the focus has gone. Cleave is 60% description, 30% character and 10% plot. The balance is off. It’s also full of women playing roles – good daughter, good mother, good girlfriend – without considering whether their parents, their children, their partners deserve their loyalty (they almost universally don’t). ... By the time I got to the end of the book, I realised it was a literary Mills & Boon ... It’s good writing lost in a poor plot. )
