The Tally Stick

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.