The Tally Stick
Ratings1
Average rating4
15
Ratings1
Average rating4
A compulsive and chilling novel about subjugation, survival and the meaning of family. The car containing the four sleeping children left the earth. From the top of the wooded bluff, where the rain-slick road had curved so treacherously, down to the swollen river at the base of the cliff, was easily sixty feet. There was no moon that night, only low, leaden cloud clogging the sky. As if suspended, the car hung in the air for a fraction - of a fraction - of a moment . . . John Chamberlain has brought his family to New Zealand from the UK. Before he starts his new job, he takes them on a driving holiday. The car skids over the road and hurtles off a cliff. The year is 1978. In 2010 the remains of John's older son have been discovered in a remote part of the West Coast, showing he lived for four years after the family disappeared. Found alongside him are his father's watch and what turns out to be a tally stick, a piece of wood scored across, marking items of debt. How had he survived and then died? Where was the rest of his family? And what did the tally stick signify?
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Wanted to like this far more than I did. I thought it was going to be a mystery but all questions are answered within the first 70 pages. The remainder of the book was just filling in the detail around the children's lives, and the breakdown of the marriage of the aunt who is looking for them.
Areas of tension that should have kept you interested were undermined, and unimportant, so there was no tension. For example, who was the father of the baby? Kat loved the child, enjoyed her life, and the story of the rape showed that actually for her it was a mystical, almost wonderful, experience, so there was no anguish, and no impetus for her (or us) to want to pursue or understand it any further. The throwaway reveal is that it is one of the (hunters/loggers)? that buys drugs. But at that point, you don't care, because Kat doesn't.
The main thread of suspense should be whether Maurice is going to escape - but we already know he does, because they found his body right at the start of the book.
Lots of promise, but the book undermines all of its surprises which makes it a mediocre thriller, and there wasn't enough poetry in the writing to make it worthwhile as literary fiction.
