Two young boys find a dead body in a wheelie bin in the Wimmera River, near the provincial town of Stawell. Mark Brandi's story then pivots to an earlier time where two primary school boys, Ben and outsider Fab are best friends. There are dark undercurrents to this friendship though; Fab's father is a scary, violent man. A neighbour of Ben's asks him to do odd jobs instead of hanging out with Fab, and this starts to drive a wedge between the two friends.

Brandi's debut has been much-praised and won many awards, but it has few surprises. Most readers will guess where this is all heading and there are very few twists in his plot. It's a diverting read, but nothing special. ( )

Small Victorian town nestled in the shadows of the Grampians. Where standing out and being different will make you a target for the ignorant and intolerant.

The Prologue sets up the secret, what was discovered and who put it there?

For Ben and his mate Fab, nine years old and in grade 5. Life in a small town is broken down into School and whatever they can get up to when not at School.
Fab is Italian and in a small rural town that's enough to attract the attention of the bullies.

'Why don't ya just keep a low profile. Avoid him."
"it's all right for you to say that. You don't know what it's like."
"i do know what it's-"
"Nah, it's all right for you. " Fab shook his head. "You're one of them. I mean, you're not like them...you're my friend. But I'm a wog."
He winced a little at the word. "It's always gonna be like that."

Days revolved around yabbying in the local dams, playing backyard cricket and just hanging around.
Things started to change and their conventional childhood changed when the 14 year daughter of their next door neighbor hung herself from the Hills Hoist.
Speculation was rampant about the why?
Into this turmoil came the new tenant into that house, Ronnie and his Statesman De Ville, and things between Ben and Fab were never the same again.

Mark Brandi has perfectly captured the interplay between the two boys, their language, the posturing and their ennui facing the long hot summer. Their lives spread and come full circle, back to whatever was found by the two young children in the prologue. It;s a long burn but well worth it. ( )

Told in three parts WIMMERA focuses on two people. In the first part we meet Ben and Fab; best friends in their final year of primary school. In their small rural town they are left to their own devices for great swathes of time. Not due to bad parenting but because that’s the way the world was then. The boys watch TV, play backyard cricket, go yabbying and camping. They can talk endlessly of mindless things such as the intricate rules for their favourite activities but they actively avoid discussing the big, scary stuff. Like why Ben’s 14-year old neighbour hung herself on the family clothesline or the fact that Fab’s father beats him regularly. No one, not even the adults, talks about those things. Towards the end of this part of the book readers know that something has gone awry for one of the boys but we have to speculate about the details. In the book’s second and third acts we find out a little more as the boys’ history is investigated, but even by the end of the novel there’s still a lot we don’t know.

It doesn’t feel quite right to say I loved WIMMERA given it is so sad and full of melancholy. But what other word is there?

I loved that it depicts an Australia I instantly recognised. Although it is set in rural Victoria I think WIMMERA owes more to its core events taking place in the late 1980’s than to its geography. Things – often awful or frightening things – that are known but not spoken of are at the heart of this story and that kind of secret keeping is – or was – not reserved for country towns. The inner-city street I grew up on was equally good at hiding things. That said, the book’s physical setting is utterly authentic too.

I loved that the book’s central characters are neither heroic nor extremely flawed. They’re ‘normal’, for want of a better word. They do good things and not-so-good things and fumble their way through life, like most of us. Maybe other readers look for inspiration from fictional characters but I like it best when people in fiction are as clueless and awkward as I usually am.

I loved that the book left so much unsaid. At 262 pages WIMMERA is one of the shortest modern novels I’ve read. And though it clearly annoys some readers I found the lack of detail very fitting. This is, after all, big scary stuff. Not the kind of thing people talk about. It feels very realistic to me that people like Ben and Fab – growing up when and where they did – would never tell all. Probably couldn’t tell all even if they had the desire to.

Like its geographic namesake WIMMERA is quite beautifully sparse and reveals its secrets unwillingly. Surely only the hardest of hearts could fail to be moved by Ben and Fab’s story even though they struggle so hard to share it. Or perhaps because they struggle so hard to share it. Highly recommended.

This novel depicts life in a small town in Victoria at the end of the 1980s very well. Ben and Fab are at primary school, best mates, and then a man moves into the house next door to Ben's family. He seems to monopolise such a lot of Ben's time and he makes Fab uncomfortable.

And then primary school finishes and Ben goes off to secondary school in a different town and the boys hardly see each other. Twenty years later Fab still lives with his mother and his life generally seems to have reached an all time low.

Part One of the novel is told in Ben's young voice while Part Two is told by the adult Fab. It is a clever technique. The reader wonders what it was that estranged the boys from each other. In Part Three we put together the secret they have been keeping for twenty years. ( )

In 2016 the unpublished manuscript of Wimmera won the UK Crime Writers’ Association debut dagger – now it’s published and we can see why. Reviewed at Newtown Review of Books ( )