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But after his sudden death, Orla, her mother and her sister are left in a no-man's land, a place where the certainties and protections of the nuclear family suddenly and mysteriously no longer apply, and where the path between girl and woman must be navigated alone.
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“Cora always bought Robur tea. Orla loved its indigo wrapper, the squeak of its leaves when she squeezed the packet, its scent. New boxes of tea, she thought, smelled like earth, sounded like a forest full of birds.”
Driving Into The Sun is the second novel by Singapore-born prize-winning Australian poet and author, Marcella Polain. It’s 1968, Perth, Western Australia, and young Orla Blest’s life is pretty good. It would be better if they were still living in the hills, where her school friends are; better still if she had a horse. But she’s here, in a suburb near the beach, with Henrietta (Mum) and Dan (Dad) and her little sister, Deebee, just for a year, until their house is built. And Dad takes her to riding lessons every second Saturday: being with Dad, just her, and riding Nugget, her two favourite things in life. But then, one Monday morning, Dad doesn’t come home.
Daddy is gone. And, yes, there was a funeral (Orla and Deebee weren’t allowed to go, were taken to the zoo instead), but despite that, despite what everyone says, despite what Deebee believes, Orla, deep down, still hopes, still expects every day that, when she puts the key in the door after school, he will be there in the kitchen, listening to his transistor radio, waiting for her, if only she behaves well, if only she’s a good girl.
Polain’s main narrator is an adolescent girl whose voice is made authentic by the joys, worries, dreads and doubts that fill her thoughts, as well as the sentence structure of her inner monologue: fragments, stops, and repetition all give it a convincing realism. Dan’s thoughts as he collapses and dies provide some history that Orla cannot know, and occasional pieces from the perspective of Henry and Deebee complete the story.
Polain’s plot is easily believable; her characters, their fears and flaws and foibles, will all resonate with readers of a certain vintage; and the setting is expertly conveyed by her evocative descriptive prose. “In the late afternoons, the tree trunks flushed pink, orange. Dusk gathered them up, a handful of slender bruises: mauve, indigo, charcoal. Then swallowed them.” There is certainly drama, but this is no page-turner: rather, it’s a slow burn story that draws the reader in to the final shocking conclusion. An outstanding read.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Fremantle Press.
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