A strange book, but it worked for me. ( )

I couldn't get past page 72. ( )

not my cuppa with the weird animal story and the affairs

I bit confusing. ( )

Pulling you inexorably closer from the first page, Chloe Hooper delineates the feelings and fears of a small Tasmanian community, still touched by a crime that left one woman dead and another missing, never to be found. Strange inconsistencies haunt those left to remember the events of that night. For instance, if Margot stabbed to death her husband’s young lover, Ellie Siddell, and all the facts point to her guilt, why was there not a trace of blood in the car she supposedly drove afterwards to Suicide Point? There she is thought to have stepped out of her shoes and into the dark, swirling air, to tumble into the sea below, but her body was never recovered.
If this sounds like a straightforward whodunit, it certainly is not. It’s also a treatise on infidelity, but teasingly so, with not a spare adjective or one false note. A parallel story begins several years later, when a provocative young teacher, Kate, joins the staff of the local primary school and the town’s married lawyer begins to take an inordinate interest in the education of his young son. Events rapidly take a somewhat predictable turn that ends – well, it would be wrong to spoil the suspense, except to say it is not a predictable book. It is beautifully written. Not all readers will appreciate the passages that give the commentary of the animals, some of which are extinct, but they’re not cute - not at all. .
The novel is also partly about women (and girls) as victims, but don’t let that put you off. There is no lecturing or polemic, but a cleverly poised subversion of expectations. Slightly unhinged, perhaps, but a deliciously entertaining read. ( )