Coming Rain
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Average rating4
15
Ratings1
Average rating4
They returned to the main part of the shed and it was Lew's turn to sharpen his cutters. The woolshed now bright and well lit. Painter walked to his stand and connected the handpiece to the down-rod. He drizzled oil over the comb and the cutter, adjusted the tension and pulled the rope to engage the running gear. The handpiece buzzed and he studied it for a moment, pulled the rope again to disengage the running gear. Repeated the process with his spare handpiece. Filled the oil can and stepped to the catching-pen door, leaned on it and looked at the sheep in the pen. Lit a cigarette, waiting for Lew. Western Australia, the wheatbelt. Lew McLeod has been travelling and working with Painter Hayes since he was a boy. Shearing, charcoal burning—whatever comes. Painter made him his first pair of shoes. It's a hard and uncertain life but it's the only one he knows. But Lew’s a grown man now. And with this latest job, shearing for John Drysdale and his daughter Clara, everything will change. Stephen Daisley writes in lucid, rippling prose of how things work, and why; of the profound satisfaction in hard work done with care, of love and friendship and the damage that both contain.
Reviews with the most likes.
As always, Stephen Daisley writes blue collar men - in this case shearers in WA in the 1950s, so very very well. The young shearer Lew, his older mentor Painter Hayes, the farmer Drysdale, the station cook Jimmy and the dingo hunter Smith are all painted in delicate, intimate brush strokes that show the men as they are and also the forces that shape them.
Another trademark of Daisley's writing is the lack of punches he pulls when describing the realities of life. In Traitor and A Better Place, Daisley describes the horrors of war on the men that fought in them, and here those horrors are shown again in the PTSD that several characters live with and how that shapes their lives, but the realities of farming life, in the stark hardship of the arid areas of Western Australia are brutally described too.
The other main character in Coming Rain is a dingo bitch that is being tracked through the scrub because she killed a young sheep. She and Lew are similar in many ways - very smart and clever, but also young and vulnerable. This relationship was my favourite part of the book.
I love Daisley's brutal and uncompromising writing style very much and I look forward to reading many more.
