Cool Water (Myfanwy Jones, Hachette)

Myfanwy Jones’s Cool Water is a cross-generational novel about the inheritance of toxic masculinity. When Frank Herbert returns to Tinaroo for his daughter’s wedding, he can’t stop thinking about his late father, Joe. While Frank begins to build a narrative out of the complex memories of this relationship, the novel moves backwards, supporting Frank’s memories with the story of Joe’s own father, Victor, an abusive and imposing figure rooted in the machismo culture of 1950s Australia. This is a sweeping novel that moves between generations and is held together by a thread of brutality—a tense element that actively chokes off the more tender subplots. While I found the theme of masculinity often overly insistent of itself—becoming a conceit that could at times lack subtlety—Jones’s strength is layering individual narratives to represent something communal. There is a link here with the dense, familial fiction of Christina Stead, but the way that Jones shifts rapidly from the interior and exterior landscape of this novel will put the reader in mind of more contemporary writers like Tim Winton. At the centre of this story is the construction of the Tinaroo Dam, and Jones, who was Miles Franklin-shortlisted for her novel Leap in 2016, has created a book that becomes something of a container itself. The contents are deep and generational; the language is swirling and sometimes overwhelming, but it offers an immersive experience of broken fathering.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Abe Theobald is a writer and graduate researcher at La Trobe University. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Friday Unlocked reviews Reviews