“She knew now, better than anyone, that even her boring, stolid, seemingly unchanging community could be torn apart by carelessness or passion or a combination of both.”

The Good Teacher is the first novel by Australian farmer, truck driver and author, R. M. Anderson. When Sarah Howard turns up for the Ordinary Meeting of the P&C Association of the Stony Creek Primary School, she knows something’s been going on between their straight-laced (married!) President, Jennifer Booth, and the new Principal, Brock Kelly. She can just feel it, and it’s making her sick. The education of Stony Creek’s children, including her own, is important to her, and Brock is a good teacher, probably the best teacher they’ve ever had, but this could ruin everything.

It’s a dramatic start to a small-town novel, but R. M. Anderson isn’t going to give his readers a moment to relax, because he launches straight into some more adultery and a fire, and then the inevitable aftermath. It’s all very cleverly done with multiple narrators whose perspective of events gives the reader an excellent overview of the whole situation. With each new piece of information, another wrinkle is added to the tale, and the tension ramps up a little, until the characters gather for an expertly crafted and blackly funny climax.

There’s quite a bit of sex, but it is not explicit; there are some expletives, but the text is not peppered with them; and there is a good dose of some seriously wicked humour. The characters are a joy: none is a stereotypical cardboard cut-out, and each one develops as the novel progresses. There are certainly no saints here, but despite their flaws (or perhaps because of them), most of the characters are appealing. The two whose focus is exclusively self-oriented, whose minds seem to be genitally located much of the time, are probably the exception. Mack is likely to be a stand-out favourite.

In Stony Creek, Anderson easily captures the small rural town and the attitudes of those who live there. He also manages to touch on some topical issues: the workload of the small farmer, online relationships, ageing and independence, and the challenges of keeping lessons for pupils in a one-teacher/one-classroom school both relevant and interesting. This is a brilliant debut novel, and readers who enjoy it will be pleased to know that this talented author has more books in the pipeline, including another set in Stony Creek. Recommended.