The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted

This was an odd book. I've read lots of novels about Holocaust survivors but none of them that was set in late 1960s Australia. The tone was muted and very masculine, so the horrors of Auschwitz seemed to have as much dramatic weight as having to put down feral dogs who were killing sheep. Even the trauma experienced by poor Peter, Tom's young -quite-son who is forced to live with his mother in a brutalizing fundamentalist Christian compound is understated. Likewise, Tom and Hannah's love story is blink-and-you'll-miss-it quick; they meet, they start sleeping together, they're in love. I guess the mix of Hemingway-type writing and romance/horror didn't work for me.