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A review by tasmanian_bibliophile
Wildlight by Robyn Mundy
4.0
‘Where do you go when you’re marooned by ocean, cut off from help?’
Sixteen-year-old Stephanie West and her parents relocate from Sydney to remote Maatsuyker Island of Tasmania’s couth coast. Steph’s twin brother Callam has died, and each member of the family is grieving in their own way. Steph’s mother, Gretchen, had lived on the island as a child when her father was a lighthouse keeper and hopes to recapture her childhood idyll. Steph’s father James, an announcer with the ABC, is having problems with his voice and is taking a break from the radio. Steph, though, is devastated. Not only is she missing her friends and tackling the last year of school, but she also arrives on the island to discover there is absolutely no mobile phone coverage, and limited phone access.
Life becomes a little more bearable for Steph when she meets Tom Forrest, a nineteen-year-old working as a deckhand on his brother’s crayfishing boat. Tom has problems of his own, thanks to his brother’s penchant for illegal fishing.
I have never travelled to Maatsuyker Island, but Ms Mundy takes me there with her description of the island, the lighthouse and (especially) the weather. I can only imagine how isolated Steph must have felt before she met Tom: away from her friends, her parents preoccupied and trying to manage their own grief. And Tom. I felt sorry for Tom, caught between family loyalty and his own sense of right and wrong.
The story moves beyond Maatsuyker, through tragedy and into adulthood. And this is a journey best taken through the pages of Ms Mundy’s story, not ruined by inadvertent spoilers. I finished the novel, still partly on Maatsuyker Island observing the Southern Ocean and thinking about the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area while also wondering what life might hold in store for the characters I met there.
A beautiful novel well worth reading.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Sixteen-year-old Stephanie West and her parents relocate from Sydney to remote Maatsuyker Island of Tasmania’s couth coast. Steph’s twin brother Callam has died, and each member of the family is grieving in their own way. Steph’s mother, Gretchen, had lived on the island as a child when her father was a lighthouse keeper and hopes to recapture her childhood idyll. Steph’s father James, an announcer with the ABC, is having problems with his voice and is taking a break from the radio. Steph, though, is devastated. Not only is she missing her friends and tackling the last year of school, but she also arrives on the island to discover there is absolutely no mobile phone coverage, and limited phone access.
Life becomes a little more bearable for Steph when she meets Tom Forrest, a nineteen-year-old working as a deckhand on his brother’s crayfishing boat. Tom has problems of his own, thanks to his brother’s penchant for illegal fishing.
I have never travelled to Maatsuyker Island, but Ms Mundy takes me there with her description of the island, the lighthouse and (especially) the weather. I can only imagine how isolated Steph must have felt before she met Tom: away from her friends, her parents preoccupied and trying to manage their own grief. And Tom. I felt sorry for Tom, caught between family loyalty and his own sense of right and wrong.
The story moves beyond Maatsuyker, through tragedy and into adulthood. And this is a journey best taken through the pages of Ms Mundy’s story, not ruined by inadvertent spoilers. I finished the novel, still partly on Maatsuyker Island observing the Southern Ocean and thinking about the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area while also wondering what life might hold in store for the characters I met there.
A beautiful novel well worth reading.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith