Goodwood

"We didn't know then that it wouldn't be long now. That the calendar was just running backwards from the day when there would be answers. At that time, all there was were questions, which drifted around Goodwood like despair…"

Goodwood is the first novel by Australian songwriter, musician and novelist, Holly Throsby. In little rural NSW town of Goodwood nothing much happens. Until, in August of 1992, two residents go missing, a week apart. Eighteen-year-old Rosie White is absent from her room on a Sunday morning. While the town puzzles over that, their favourite butcher, Bart McDonald fails to return from his regular Sunday fish on the lake.

The town soon learns that his boat has been found on the lake without any sign of Bart, and when the lake is dragged, no body is found. They've always believed that theirs is a safe town, but now: "Goodwood had never been visited by such collective worry, and we were not familiar with the burden of the unknown."

Seventeen-year-old Jean and her best friend George observe and discuss what they see. Their teenaged thoughts and emotions are complicated by this disquiet that settles on the town, although Jean is also distracted by the arrival in town of Evie, the most beautiful girl she has ever seen.

The uncertainty has a negative effect on the town: people are sad and anxious; many rally together and support one another; with others, tension rises and tempers flare; the uglier side of some relationships is exposed.

Readers should not expect an action-packed page-turner. Rather, the pace befits the small-town setting, and while there are mysteries to be solved, and the reader will be kept guessing as each piece of relevant information is revealed, this is more a study of an Australian country town than a crime thriller.

Some elements of this novel (small town where everyone knows everyone, the observations of the young female narrator and her best friend, the mysteriously missing residents) are reminiscent of Joanna Cannon's The Trouble With Goats and Sheep, a favourable comparison.

Throsby's depiction of the Australian small town is faultless: her setting so well rendered that readers familiar with the area may well have a certain town fixed in their minds. But it could be any NSW small town with its attractive and its less desirable qualities, and that includes the residents.

While some are necessarily a little stereotypical and therefore one-dimensional (the gossipy grocer, the outraged-at-anything-new old couple, the busybody neighbour, the obligatory sleazebag) and others are quite quirky, the townspeople are, of course, what makes this novel. And if they are all are believably flawed, many are also kind and generous and wise and some have unexpected depth. It soon becomes apparent why they love their town.

Throsby certainly has a way with words: "A woman who had long ago lost her mooring and sunk like a ship into her peculiar home. A person who had become more like a rumour than a human being." The cute little map in the front is appreciated. This tale is clever and captivating and heart-warming and there's plenty of (sometimes very black) humour. An outstanding debut.