{"id":2314,"date":"2012-08-21T06:48:45","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T06:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2314"},"modified":"2012-10-27T06:45:27","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T06:45:27","slug":"past-the-shallows-by-favel-parrett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2314","title":{"rendered":"Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by John Murray 30 August 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

288pp, paperback, \u00a38.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Catherine Jones<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the remote south coast of Tasmania, the violent father of three boys earns a living by diving for abalone, a valued shellfish found \u2018down where the algae grew thick, where the continental shelf dropped away\u2026and there were caves and crevices, places to get stuck\u2019.<\/p>\n

From the off, there\u2019s a pervasive menace to Past the Shallows<\/em>, the tersely elegant prose sketching a sense of isolation heightened by the vast, unpredictable ocean.<\/p>\n

In an environment at once beautiful and threatening, brothers Joe, Miles and Harry are at the whim of their father\u2019s moods, and seek their scant pleasures from the sea \u2013 surfing, searching for sharks\u2019 eggs, taking mementoes of life underwater back to a pitiful existence.<\/p>\n

For the youngest, the vulnerable and generous Harry, the sea is, \u2018Water that was always there. Always everywhere\u2026 He knew the way he felt about the ocean would never leave him now. It would be there always, right inside him.\u2019<\/p>\n

The boys\u2019 tough life is told from the perspective of Harry and middle brother Miles, who is unsuited to his father\u2019s livelihood. Going under the surface frightens him \u2013 \u2018the darkness and of the kelp wrapping around his legs… And it made his head buzz like crazy, the pressure. The weight of all that water.\u2019<\/p>\n

For Miles, there is the joy and freedom of surfing, but there is also working the sea with his volatile father and being touched by the \u2018thick, steel blue skin\u2019 of a shark. What chance does youth stand against the age-old ocean?<\/p>\n

Water flows through this novel \u2013 the boys\u2019 grandfather dying in hospital was \u2018drowning on the inside\u2019 \u2013 but lives are pinned down.\u00a0 Existence is overpoweringly static, trapped. Harry\u2019s friend, Stuart, lives in a caravan that has been in one place so long it has \u2018sunk down into the earth so its wheels were almost buried\u2019. Kit homes have gardens full of rusty car shells and decaying boats \u2018marooned on land\u2019.<\/p>\n

Between touching sibling closeness sits a story, untold, unremembered, drifting on the edge of reality and you know things will change. There\u2019s Joe, the eldest boy, intent on moving on, and the burgeoning friendship between Harry and George Fuller, the loner living in a shack in the woods – \u2018his face all squashed in\u2019 and rumoured to have killed his parents.<\/p>\n

In a best-selling Australian debut spoken of in the same breath as Cormac McCarthy and Tim Winton, Favel Parrett\u2019s lean prose evokes the cruel beauty of the sea, the treasure of lost childhood freedoms, and yearning emotions that linger beyond the last page.<\/p>\n

While I felt the character of the father and Joe were somewhat under-drawn, this is an accomplished debut addressing the frailty and determination of human existence; it\u2019s a joy to read such spare prose giving so much.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Catherine Jones<\/p>\n

Water flows through this novel \u2013 the boys\u2019 grandfather dying in hospital was \u2018drowning on the inside\u2019 \u2013 but lives are pinned down. Existence is overpoweringly static, trapped. Harry\u2019s friend, Stuart, lives in a caravan that has been in one place so long it has \u2018sunk down into the earth so its wheels were almost buried\u2019. Kit homes have gardens full of rusty car shells and decaying boats \u2018marooned on land\u2019.[…] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2314"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3013,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314\/revisions\/3013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}