Salt Rain |
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Sarah Armstrong
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Pages: 225 (Paperback)
ISBN: 1596922184
Pub: MacAdam/Cage Publishing
Pub date: 2007-05-17
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 395747
Reader Reviews:
"Rain and mud, that's all there was in the end" (3/3 people found this helpful)
It's the rainy season far to the North of Sydney in the New South Wales hinterland. Flooding of the creeks and riverbeds is not just expected, it's almost a given. With the roads cut off and the cane fields in danger of flooding, the rain overflows in curtains from the gutters of small weatherboard houses and drenches the tall weeds growing high and luxuriant against back fences.
Fourteen-year-old Allie finds herself holed-up in her aunt Julia's dairy farm, bought up from Sydney against her will. Somehow she had agreed to pack a bag and get on the train and now she's cut-off from the outside world, desperately wanting to return to the City. Allie aches for her mother Mae, who has mysteriously gone missing and is believed to have drowned in Sydney Harbor.
Allie knows her mother was a good swimmer; they swam in the Harbour all the time, and she just can't believe that Rae would just leave her like this. Now ensconced in her Mother's childhood home with Julia as her temporary guardian, Allie is forced to confront some difficult truths about her mother's mysterious past and ends up facing harsh revelations of her own childhood.
Just after Allie is born, Mae escaped to Sydney, and ended up living a discontented restless existence in the arms of a man who abused her. Growing up around her mother, Allie always wondered who her father was, but Mae was reluctant to tell her the truth, her pregnancy always shrouded in secrecy and mystery. Allie believed what Mae said about her father, and that he was a wondering hot-air balloon operator at country shows whom one afternoon hurriedly seduced her.
Allie is convinced that the handsome Saul, the son of a local dairy farmer, holds the key to her father's identity. Determined to have Mae's stories laid out and have the threads of them pulled apart in front of everyone, Allie finds comfort in Saul who had a special friendship with Rae and was even considered her "First Love." She's drawn to the smell of him, "the salty sweat and the soft fleshy curl of his ear, this warm touch of his hand," yet all she really wants is his memories of Mae.
Sexy and good-looking, Saul is attracted to Allie, he sees a mirror image of her mother, and the girl's presence at his house begins to re-ignite years of protracted passion. After all these years, he still longs for Mae, remembering the feel of Mae's body, remembering the stories of how they made love, "his hands holding her so tenderly, the motion of their bodies together."
These characters are looking for absolution that can never be given. Allie is forced to confront her past and make sense of her present, and cope with her bourgeoning sexual attraction to Saul - a man twice her age. Scraps of old memories keep flooding back to Julia upon Allie's arrival - the day Rae hurriedly left, with her baby. Saul, for his part, found comfort in working his body after he found out Mae was having the balloon man's baby, he just wanted "the sweat to slough the longing for Mae from his cells."
Author Sarah Armstrong's prose is languorous and sensual, the motif of rain reappearing constantly throughout. There are so many extraordinary phrases, shrewd observations and poetic insights that it is almost impossible not to be touched by this novel. The rain forever connects Allie and Rae - she feels the same rain that had fallen on her mother's skin - "the raindrops making an endless circuit from earth to clouds;" the rain salty on her tongue, "like tears and like blood, and for a moment she could taste her mother;" and the rain falling day after day, coming to soothe and contain Allie, "the clouds rest in the steep valet walls, holding her fast."
Salt Rain is undoubtedly Australian literary fiction at its best. It's a quiet, introspective, and gorgeously written novel, the author constantly bombarding the reader with a wealth of stunning images: the rain-pocketed water, the misty clouds moving down the valley, and the tree trunks slicing the satiny surface of the water.
For most of her life, Mae had tried to keep her daughter "inside that safe watery place," sheltered from the harsh realities of life. But Allie is steadily growing up, she's becoming a woman and her journey is just as much one of self-knowledge as it is finding out the truth about her beloved mother's mysterious and cloudy past. Mike Leonard April 06.
Categories
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Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> General