Where the Light Falls by Gretchen Shirm.
The author of this excellent book, Gretchen Shirm, is a writer and lawyer. She has been published in The Best Australian Stories, Art Monthly, Etchings, Wet Ink, Australian Book Review, The Saturday Paper and Southerly among others. In 2011 she was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelists for her collection, Having Cried Wolf.
Exquisitely and beautifully written in vivid, sparse prose, this is a book that entices you in. Written in the third person the book is all seen through the protagonist’s Andrew’s eyes.It is a small to medium sized book in thirty chapters of compelling writing. The book moves at a relatively slow pace but this helps increase the tension. Sometimes almost cinematically there are flashbacks – in some ways it reminds me perhaps of Speaking in Tongues by Andrew Bovell (made into the film Lantana) .It isn’t a murder mystery as such, rather we follow a middle aged artist trying to find himself and discover what happened to his previous girlfriend.
Andrew Spruce, a photographer compelled by ‘the honesty in broken things’, now living in Berlin, returns to Sydney when he learns that his former girlfriend Kirsten has disappeared near Lake George. When he returns to Sydney, Kirsten’s body has still not yet been found. He extends his visit to investigate her shadowy past, putting his current relationship with Dominique, a dancer in Berlin, at risk for reasons he hardly comprehends. While in Sydney he meets and befriends a damaged young girl Phoebe and her mother Pippa – he knows Phoebe will be a startling, captivating subject for his new series of photos. As he struggles to comprehend his motivations, Andrew realises that photography has become an obsession based on his need to hold on to the things he has lost in his life – His father especially. Andrew re-evaluates his art and why he has become a photographer. The book is all about light, about ‘the photographer’s eye’ and capturing light – how Andrew as a photographer sees everything as light – we learn why he became a photographer and what he regards as the essence of photography. The Meaning of Life and Art and why people become artists is also discussed. Also how we perceive the world and how we hope other see us; for example Andrew’s various subjects and his tentative relationship with Pippa and Phoebe.
The mystery of Kirsten’s death and the rather unsatisfactory conclusion by the coroner are important as they also lead to Andrew redefining his relationship with his mother and also Dominique in Berlin. Andrew’s father died suddenly, and Andrew never knew why – he finally learns the truth about his father’s death when he was eleven.
Andrew tracks down Kirsten’s mother, her stepfather and her sister in an attempt to find out why Kirsten chose to disappear into the icy depths of Lake George, her car left abandoned by the shore. The funeral without a body answers no questions, leaving the mourners trapped in a permanent unanswered state of limbo and grief. It’s also a book about damage, especially that which is quietly hidden from others.
Finally Andrew has to choose – will he acknowledge and return to his current personal and professional life – Dom in Berlin and a major exhibition in London – or will he let himself to be drawn back into his previous world with Kirsten even though she is no longer around? The question of what happened to Kirsten, and the hints of something mysterious with the stepfather, keep us turning the pages until the conclusion.
There are superb, striking descriptions of Sydney that capture it brilliantly. There are also terrific descriptions of Canberra, the mysterious Lake George as well as London and Berlin. While somewhat bleak and melancholy at times, the characters are finely written and distinctively created, firmly visible against the unfolding dramas. Andrew’s best friend Stewart is delightfully depicted as are Andrew’s mother and Phoebe and Pippa. The complexity and frailty of human relationships is very well written too.
Life and art explosively collide in this magnificent, deeply moving novel.
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5
Where The Light Falls by Gretchen Shirm
Category: Literary fiction
ISBN: 9781760113650
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Imprint: Allen & Unwin
Pub Date: July 2016
Page Extent: 320
Format: Book
Subject: Literary fiction
