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Darren Williams. Angel Rock. Harper
Collins 2002. RRP A$26.95. |
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Disappearance
and loss, resurrection and redemption pervade the 311
pages of Angel Rock, the second novel by Darren
Williams, fitting themes given the author's own troubled
literary career. In 1995, Williams won the Australian/Vogel
Literary Award, Australia's most lucrative prize for unpublished
manuscripts by writers under 35, for the novel Swimming
in Silk. Yet despite the profile this gave him, Williams
was unable to secure a book deal and vanished from the
literary spotlight. |
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Seven
years later and still only 35, Williams has returned with
a novel superior to its prize-winning predecessor, both
in terms of its prose and narrative. Angel Rock
builds from a simple, yet intriguing, premise: two young
boys go missing in northern NSW bushland in 1969; ten
days later, only one returns. The social and psychological
aftermath of this tragedy on the fictional logging community
of Angel Rock unravels from the perspectives of three
very different, but equally troubled, characters - Tom
Ferry, the thirteen year-old who returns alone; Grace,
the introverted daughter of the local policeman; and Gibson,
a city detective investigating a seemingly unrelated suicide.
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Williams,
who grew up in the NSW timber country, renders its beauty
in watercolour detail: |
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In the
morning the valley was flooded with a silver mist
as though a strange inland sea had risen while they
slept. They took it in turns to walk down to the river's
hidden edge and splash and wash themselves awake before
eating a breakfast of porridge with Sunshine milk
and golden syrup. By the time they'd finished, the
sun had crested the hills to the east and found rainbows
in the steam coming off their mugs of tea. (p200)
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As
with Swimming in Silk, it is turn of phrase and
deftness with imagery where Williams excels: |
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The memory
was as mysterious as an underground stream, as black
and snakelike, headless and tailless; a black echo
of lightning deep deep down inside the earth - inside
him - but unreachable. (p242)
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Henry Gunn
was waiting for them down by the boat ramp, a terrible
uncertainty in his eyes, as if he doubted the veracity
of the air he breathed and the earth he walked on.
(p65)
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A
blend of literary and genre fiction, Angel Rock
is really two books. On one level, it is the attractive
coming-of-age story of Tom and Grace, young adults struggling
not just with personal tragedy but with the everyday ordeals
of small town adolescence. Both characters are sensitively-drawn
and their emotional journey gives Angel Rock a
tender resonance which only wavers when the focus of the
story shifts to the dark meanderings of Gibson's investigation.
It is on this second level, as a conventional mystery
thriller, where Angel Rock is less satisfying.
In contrast to the measured beauty of the pastoral scenes,
Gibson's presence jars as if inserted at the insistence
of a Hollywood studio. As familiar a cop as in any straight-to-video
thriller, his demons are the usual ones (drinking problem,
career burnout, dead family) and it is impossible not
to hear his observations in whiskey-shot voice-over: |
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Gibson
looked at her, at the fierce protectiveness in her
eyes. Had Darcy's life been taken by another he doubted
she would have shown any mercy to the killer were
she ever to judge him. She reminded him of one of
those sad-looking stone angels in graveyards with
their heads at a tilt, listening to heavenly song
so highly pitched only they and dogs could hear it.
Up there with the beating of bees' wings, the fluttering
hearts of the lovelorn - but altogether deaf to the
appeals of the guilty. It didn't matter. She seemed
a brave kid and he fell immediately for her spirit.
(p105)
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With
dubious character motivations (would a detective really
come all this way on a hunch, would the police force let
him and would everyone in town talk so readily?) and leaps
in logic as spectacular as Bob Beamon at altitude, the
plot becomes increasingly silly and the Hollywood dramatics
of the finale, although beautifully phrased, seem an unsatisfactory
resolution to the story's opening. |
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Yet,
despite the obvious tension between the literary and thriller
elements, both emanate from the same thematic core. Each
character in Angel Rock is searching, physically
and metaphysically: for the missing boys, for ways of
coping when only one is found, for answers to life, for
the meaning to suppressed memories, for forgiveness and
redemption. In tone with these struggles, the story is
awash with biblical and religious allusions: angels, visions,
New Edens, fire and brimstone preachers, lion dens, Ezras
and Floods, Lepers, resurrections from the dead and, for
Tom and Gibson in particular, allegoric dreams: |
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All he
could remember of the dreams at first was the darkness
in them, occasionally a flickering yellow light, but
then he was able to recall the presence of something
crouching in the darkness, something with teeth -
man or beast he couldn't tell - waiting, watching.
(p95)
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Like
the creature in one of Gibson's nightmares, Angel Rock
is ultimately an odd beast, neither one thing nor the
other. Yet, despite its flaws, Angel Rock remains
a very readable and strikingly written yarn by an emerging
author still honing his craft, its publication a vindication
of persistence through seven years of obscurity. One suspects
the best is still to come for Darren Williams. A young
man, like Tom Ferry, back from the wilderness and now
finally ready to seize his future. |
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