Each time I picked up this book, the line from Amazing Grace sprang into my mind “Bright Shining as the Sun”. Orr didn’t refer to this in the three epigraphs that open the book: instead he quoted religious philosopher Thomas Merton (so, related I guess.)
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mind and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness…This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud…As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now what I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this. But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking round shining like the sun.
This book isn’t set in Louisville: instead, it’s in the small South Australian rural town of Selwyn, population 300. We’ve all been to towns like this: the pub, the school, the IGA, pharmacy, an indifferent restaurant, the fish and chip shop, the icecream shop. We see people like those who live in Selwyn when we watch ABC programs like ‘Back Roads’ or ‘Rosehaven’ and we see them, unfortunately, when floods and fires in rural towns are being reported in the news. Within a few pages, you relax into the presence of the main protagonist, Wilf Healy, the 80 year old Selwyn personality, living at the pub since his wife died. He has ended up being bus-driver, vegetable deliverer, postman -only some of which he is paid for- and he knows everyone, their stories, and their histories. Selwyn is a dying town, with nothing for its young people, and it’s a place that people escape from, rather than come to. His brother Colin escaped to a different world in America, another brother had died, and here we have Wilf, still in Selwyn, his niece Orla dying of cancer, and her son Connor drifting aimlessly through life, with vague dreams of becoming a musician, but lazy, self-centred and without purpose.
The pace of this book is slow, and you find yourself slowing down to match it. Nothing much happens. The schoolkids he picks up on the bus, day after day, have a future as flat as the farmland around town. There’s Sienna, his first pick up, constantly wedded to her phone. There’s Luke, who is writing an interminable horror story, Trevor a quiet boy, struggling with his sexuality, and Darcy, insolent and indulged. There’s nothing for kids to do except hang around the Scoop n’ Smiles ice-cream shop which is selling kids more than ice-cream. There’s no heavy plot-development here, instead life just goes on with people doing the best they can, sometimes succeeding, other times not.
Wilf is a man who stayed: his brother left. He has a nostalgic dream of returning to Louth, the small off-shore island where he grew up with his brothers and a violent father but there are too many strings holding him to Selwyn. To stay or to go? Is he a man unfulfilled, cocooned in his small-town life and hemmed in by obligations? Or is he rich in connections, true to himself and his upbringing, “shining like the sun” just as the people around him do too?
This is a gentle book, steeped in nostalgia, and Orr captures small town life and dialogue perceptively. It’s generous in its approach to people, and respectful of our shared humanity, with all its foibles.
You can find reviews at:
ANZLitLoversLitBlog https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/04/02/shining-like-the-sun-2024-by-stephen-orr/
Whispering Gums https://whisperinggums.com/2024/10/11/stephen-orr-shining-like-the-sun-bookreview/
Inreview https://inreview.com.au/inreview/books-and-poetry/2024/04/18/book-review-shining-like-the-sun/
My rating: 8/10
Sourced from: Yarra Plenty Regional Library
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 