Bruce Hall

I found the untangling and unedifying behaviour of Scully after Billy arrived in Ireland simply unbelievable. The fact that Billy who had only very recently been his close confidante would not even talk to Scully , let alone attempt to explain where Jennifer went and why just seemed implausible . His reckless care for Billy , just a kid flitting around Europe with barely a dollar to his name just made for poor form from a seemingly stoic chap. The endless self recrimination and self pity was too much for me . Irma’s arrival in the book was bizarre . We can only surmise where and why Jennifer and why she moved on abandoning her kid while apparently pregnant . It is nothing like anything I have read from Tim Winton , whose books on WA have been mostly uplifting . This book is a massive depressant and how it came to Winton’s world is beyond me .