Ghost River (Tony Birch, UQP)

In 1960s Collingwood, Melbourne, two boys, Sonny and Ren, forge an unlikely friendship and soon become thick as thieves. They pass their free time swimming in the river near their neighbourhood against their parents’ wishes—it’s contaminated, they’re told, and its muddy depths hold morbid secrets. In a story that takes in murderous crims, a band of garrulous vagrants and a hazily defined Pentecostalist-style cult, Ghost River engages and frustrates in equal measure. This is Tony Birch’s first novel since the Miles Franklin-shortlisted Blood in 2011; his 2014 book The Promise is a collection of short fiction, full of knockabout humour and empathy for society’s dispossessed. That form remains Birch’s strong suit. Ghost River, expanded from a short story, feels undernourished and too eager to move from scene to scene. This is most evident in the novel’s prose, which often states outright what could be better conveyed by subtler means. When Birch writes ‘Brixey had the uncanny ability to read people and saw something in Sonny that most missed’, it reads like a writer’s note—something that could be better integrated into the narrative flow at a later pass. Despite strong early chapters, Ghost River doesn’t satisfy on the same level as Birch’s earlier books.

Gerard Elson is a writer and bookseller who works at Readings St Kilda

Category: Reviews