2015, 321 p
I gave this book 120 pages before putting it aside. I found the main character, conservation architect Christopher Bright self-absorbed, and just didn’t care enough for his existential crisis over his birth father to continue. The book is written in present tense, with many, many flashbacks of dubious significance, and I found the handling of tense switches awkward. Do all books have so many small editorial errors or was it just that I wasn’t enjoying it? Add to this the many descriptions of food and appearance: all these things are warning signs that this book is not for me.
I find that many of the books I abandon or finish resentfully are set in recent or current-day Australia, and it’s possible that I’m rejecting current-day obsessions as much as the books themselves. But I found that I just didn’t buy sufficiently into the secret and deceptions that lay at the heart of Christopher’s emotional pain, and there are too many other books that I want to read. I have obviously bailed out before the title became explanatory, and I see from the acknowledgments at the end that the plot obviously moved beyond the beachhouse in Coolum and the Queensland bungalow and affluent angst. This particular reader, however, hasn’t been engaged enough to go along for the ride.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 