Recently, I’ve immersed myself in Australian crime fiction. I’ve read novels by Chris Hammer, Jane Harper, Patricia Wolf and S.R. White. I like the ones by Jane Harper the most, but they’ve all held my attention because of their settings. Detectives solve crimes in places with endless roads leading to outback towns where visitors who don’t know how to survive in the heat stick out like beacons. Dust hangs in the air; the dirt is red; everything is dry.
We know what dry feels like even though we don’t live in an outback town. We’ve lived through many years of drought and experienced starving fires racing through dry-as-a-bone bush towards our home. During the last fire, when water-bombing helicopters flew over our house, hour after hour, and we breathed in thick smoke, day after day, I got fed up with the situation. I moaned to my family: “I bet the smoke is making me sick. It’s inside me doing terrible things. I’m going to die. And when I do, you won’t be able to bury me. The ground is so hard because of the drought. You’ll have to wait until it rains. And that might take years.”
My husband Andy laughed. “If we can’t bury you, we’ll cremate you instead.”
“No, you won’t! I don’t want to be turned into smoke and ash!”
My daughter Imogen said, “If we put your body in the bush, the fire will do the job for us.”
A bit of black humour to lighten our heavy dark smoky days.
A bushfire could be the setting for a crime novel, couldn’t it? The murderer could throw the body into the flames. But he couldn’t do that at the moment because there are no fires burning near us. Even though it’s summer, it’s unlikely a bushfire will arrive because it’s raining. Again. Our roads are floating away because we’ve had record amounts of rain. But our home is safe. I sit inside in the dry, reading Australian crime novels.
Years ago, I found a list of the most popular Australian novels of the year and decided to work my way through it, allowing myself to give up on any books that didn’t immediately grab my attention. I enjoyed. And I learnt. I saw our beautiful country in many different ways.
Approaching the same topic through the stories of authors with unique angles and styles is a wonderful way to gain knowledge, isn’t it?
So is learning from experience: we know a lot about bushfires and drought because they’re not just stories but part of our lives.
And now we’re learning about rain. Three years ago, when there was so much smoke in the air that we could barely see the water-bombing helicopter in our park, we thought it would never rain again. But, of course, it did. We’ve had a couple of very wet years.
But one day, we’ll be in drought again, watching the horizon: “Is that a fire approaching?” So that’s why I’m not complaining about the rain outside. I’m happy, relaxing inside with my crime novels.
A few years ago, I talked about my attempt to read as many of the popular Australian novels as possible in episode 18 of my Stories of an Unschooling Family podcast. I recorded Resolutions, Reading, Writing and Coarse Language early in my podcasting adventure when I probably stumbled over words and got my thoughts in a big muddle, but I was full of enthusiasm, and maybe I said something that’s still worth listening to!
So, I’m wondering if you’ve ever read lots of novels that share a theme or setting. And is it wet or dry at your place at the moment?
