Cherrywood (Jock Serong, HarperCollins)

Jock Serong’s Cherrywood obscures time and place, braiding together the fates of his characters through extraordinary ventures and chance meetings. In his latest novel, Serong (The Burning Island, On the Java Ridge) captures historical moments from the 1910s and the 1990s and invites the reader into strange worlds that are constantly in motion. In 1914, in Edinburgh, Thomas Wrenfether, a wealthy gentleman, embarks on the nearly impossible project of building an American-style paddlewheel boat in the faraway, bustling city of Melbourne. Despite his efforts to control the project, the vessel has a mind of its own before it is even constructed. In 1994, in Melbourne, young and brilliant lawyer Martha purchases a bottle of wine from a handsome stranger at a mysterious Fitzroy pub and repeatedly finds herself drawn back there, obsessed by the mechanisms within. Cherrywood’s minor characters—Wrenfether’s shadowy business partner, Ximenon; the elderly proprietress of the pub, antagonistic Nan; and the eccentric American shipmaster, Carville—roam through the novel, adding more pieces to the puzzle. Just as the titular paddlewheel boat and pub are constantly in motion, so the reader moves through this complex yet inviting narrative. Intricately plotted, spanning time and space, Cherrywood brings to mind the scope of Richard Powers’s The Overstory and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, with strong homage to the works of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Denise Jarrott is an author and writer whose work has appeared in Overland, South Carolina Review, Denver Quarterly and elsewhere. She grew up in Iowa and currently lives in Naarm/Melbourne. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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