Angel Rock : A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries (Paperback))

Rating:
Summary: page turner extrordinair
Review: Angel Rock is a book that never seems to entirely come together. I often felt that the author was trying to write a literary combination of "Twin Peaks" and "Picnic at Hanging Rock," but he doesn't really succeed at either. Despite a promising beginning with the layout of the town established and its people introduced, the book tends to be a rather flatly written story with very little to surprise the reader or hold their attention for too long. Yes, there are two mysteries at the core of the novel, one of a missing child, and the other of a teenage suicide but they fail to really grab onto you and get under your skin. Instead, with too many characters for such a short book (one of the biggest flaws is the character of the detective, his addition to the story makes him an unnecessary appendage of literary invention), and too many jumps back and forth with point of view left me feeling a little muddled and therefore could not really identify or graft onto any particular character. Williams writes the novel in a detached way that made me feel like I was reading and witnessing the action through a thick sheet of smudged plexiglass. I wish I could have seen more, but there was just too much in the way. Williams shows promise but "Angel Rock" is not a book that would promise a dazzling career.

Rating:
Summary: Simply, a masterpiece
Review: Every few years we are privileged with book that tells a story so enchanting, that it brings emotions to the surface, water to the eyes, and an ache in your chest that you must look away for a moment to breathe and take it all in, for it is so beautiful and feels so real, in all the same moment. One of the first books I remember feeling this way about, The Odd Sea by Frederick Reiken released in 1998, I am still using as barometer for such feelings about a book. And now in 2002, I have found another, Angel Rock by Australian writer Darren Williams. The Aussies are on a roll this year!

Twelve year old Tom Ferris, along with his younger four year old half brother Flynn, get lost while coming home from working with their logger father, a drunkard named Henry,
who chooses to spend the evening drinking & womanizing in place of being a responsible parent and taking care of his boys. Tom wanders out of the woods, head bumped with a loss of his memory and an ache in his heart at the loss of Flynn. The Sheriff, Pop Mathers take in young Tom & his mother who cannot cope after the tragedy, setting up some of the best and most heartfelt dialogue in the book between this heartbroken wonderful young boy and the older wiser patient kind soul of the sheriff, a loving father himself. All this is also played against the back drop of another tragedy: the suicide of Pop Mather's daughter Grace's best friend Darcy Steele. The book, named after the town in which in all takes place, Angel Rock, attracts the investigator from far away Sidney who wants and actually needs to find out why a beautiful young woman took her own life. His is tortured himself by his own past, and Gibson also turns to Pop Mathers for understanding & truth. This is the story line, simple, but told with a description & prose so insightful & heartbreakingly eloquent. At times I felt overwhelmed by its beauty.

Darren William's first book, the award winning Swimming In Silk published in 1995,is already very scarce and highly collectable and I believe it is only a matter of time before this one is too, and on such high merit.

This book will stay with me for a long time to come, of that I am sure.

Rating:
Summary: CLEAR-CUT, MESMERIZING PROSE
Review: From his opening words with which he introduces "still simple hearted" 13-year-old Tom Ferry to his shattering closing Australian author Darren Williams fills each page with clear-cut, mesmerizing prose.

"Swimming In Silk," Mr. Williams's impressive first novel won for him the important Vogel Award. Now, American readers are able to see what the hoopla is about.

A town in the desolate Australian outback, Angel Rock, is surrounded by dense undergrowth, unexplored wilderness. Thus, when two brothers, Tom, and his much younger brother, Flynn, are out alone it is not surprising that they become lost. What is astounding to Tom is the almost instantaneous disappearance of Flynn. He seems to have vanished in the blink of an eye.

The small town is aroused by what has or what might have happened to Flynn. But, to compound their unease another child who lived in Angel Rock is found dead in Sydney. The teenaged girl is a supposed suicide.

These two heart-stopping events bring to the surface much that has long been hidden in this little enclave: hatreds, obsessions. And, these events also bring Gibson, a Sydney detective given to booze and depression.

"Angel Rock" pulls the reader along as secret after secret is revealed. The country is perfectly limned; the psychology astutely probed. Quite a read this!...

Rating:
Summary: Angel Rock, Hard-ly Good
Review: I have no doubt that Darren Williams has an ability to write. I'm sure he's much better than I could ever be, but this book is hardly a good example of good writing.
Angel Rock has a decent premise: An outback town in 1960's Australia, with a tightly connected population of people whose lives are so intertwined that naturally bitterness and anger effect them. It begins with the dissaperance of two brothers, who were out logging with their alcholic father. A search party is formed from the town folk, and people try hard to find them. The younger boy, 4 goes missing, while the older is found. At the same time, a 15 year old girl from town goes to Sydney and kills herself, and the detective who finds her body becomes "obsessed" with finding out why she killed herself. We learn--vaguely though--that Gibson, the detective, had a sister who killed herself too. Problem is, Gibson's motivation is hardly believable. He just packs up, leaves on a vacation to go out to Angel Rock to uncover the motivations behind her death.
What follows are the introductions of a half-dozen or so characters, who are so barely defined, yet important to a weak storyline. First theres, Billy Flood, a drifter and former mental patient, who, though he's in his 50's was friends with the suicide victim. Then there's "Father" Adam Carney, who's supposedly this maverick priest/minister who had connections to all the maverick sinners in town, and even loved her too. The problem with Williams descriptions are that they are very lousy. Father Adam is not actually a priest, as we think he is--which is confusing--he's actually a revivalist minister, an example that Williams perhaps didn't pay enough attention to detail. There's also Smith--another older man who is intertwined with the drama, though vaguely and mysteriously, though he turns out to be the major influence in the story. And Ezra, the girl's father. The men were bitter about the death of a woman nearly 20 years before, though unless Williams described that forwardly, the reader would have little insight into it.
The main character, Tom, starts out as a mature independent thirteen year old, and turns into something of an infant as the story progresses, obsessing over circuses and a puppy. Williams paid poor attention to his characters' personalities even.
Grace is the town Sherrif's daughter. She too is vague as well. Pop, the sheriff is the best defined character, and very likeable, perhaps he would have been the better focus of this weak novel. It's not a very good book, though there was seriously something great Williams could have done with it, if only he'd slowed down, and put emphasis on the right characters.
The ending is so abrupt, and to most vague. There's revealed everything by mouth which should have come out naturally. Better luck next time Mr. Williams.
I am curious to read his other book because I hear great things about it, and I can tell that he's got a great sense of story, he just needs to slow down in its telling...

Rating:
Summary: Angel Rock, Hard-ly Good
Review: I have no doubt that Darren Williams has an ability to write. I'm sure he's much better than I could ever be, but this book is hardly a good example of good writing.
Angel Rock has a decent premise: An outback town in 1960's Australia, with a tightly connected population of people whose lives are so intertwined that naturally bitterness and anger effect them. It begins with the dissaperance of two brothers, who were out logging with their alcholic father. A search party is formed from the town folk, and people try hard to find them. The younger boy, 4 goes missing, while the older is found. At the same time, a 15 year old girl from town goes to Sydney and kills herself, and the detective who finds her body becomes "obsessed" with finding out why she killed herself. We learn--vaguely though--that Gibson, the detective, had a sister who killed herself too. Problem is, Gibson's motivation is hardly believable. He just packs up, leaves on a vacation to go out to Angel Rock to uncover the motivations behind her death.
What follows are the introductions of a half-dozen or so characters, who are so barely defined, yet important to a weak storyline. First theres, Billy Flood, a drifter and former mental patient, who, though he's in his 50's was friends with the suicide victim. Then there's "Father" Adam Carney, who's supposedly this maverick priest/minister who had connections to all the maverick sinners in town, and even loved her too. The problem with Williams descriptions are that they are very lousy. Father Adam is not actually a priest, as we think he is--which is confusing--he's actually a revivalist minister, an example that Williams perhaps didn't pay enough attention to detail. There's also Smith--another older man who is intertwined with the drama, though vaguely and mysteriously, though he turns out to be the major influence in the story. And Ezra, the girl's father. The men were bitter about the death of a woman nearly 20 years before, though unless Williams described that forwardly, the reader would have little insight into it.
The main character, Tom, starts out as a mature independent thirteen year old, and turns into something of an infant as the story progresses, obsessing over circuses and a puppy. Williams paid poor attention to his characters' personalities even.
Grace is the town Sherrif's daughter. She too is vague as well. Pop, the sheriff is the best defined character, and very likeable, perhaps he would have been the better focus of this weak novel. It's not a very good book, though there was seriously something great Williams could have done with it, if only he'd slowed down, and put emphasis on the right characters.
The ending is so abrupt, and to most vague. There's revealed everything by mouth which should have come out naturally. Better luck next time Mr. Williams.
I am curious to read his other book because I hear great things about it, and I can tell that he's got a great sense of story, he just needs to slow down in its telling...

Rating:
Summary: Muscular prose fuels powerful story
Review: In his engrossing, suspenseful and beautifully written second novel (the first to be published in the US), Australian writer Darren Williams takes us into the hard, intimate, small-town life of the outback where money is scarce, old grudges lodge deep and secrets fester. Angel Rock is a place where the kids still go barefoot to school and the protagonist, 13-year-old Tom, can still barter chores for his after-school ice pop.

As the book opens on a Friday afternoon in the first baking heat of summer, Tom, teetering on the brink between boy and man, revels in the growth of his maturing body, a fleeting joy quickly extinguished by his usual run-in with the town bully, Sonny Steele. His weekend anticipation is further dashed by his step-father, Henry's, demand that Tom help him finish a logging job. As his mother is also working, Tom's four-year-old half-brother, Flynn, also goes along. Henry works Tom hard, seemingly careless of his safety, an impression reinforced by talk of the other loggers.

" 'Henry's boy,' one said, as if Tom were hard of hearing.
'Doesn't treat him good,' said a second.
'Maybe it's not your business.'
'Maybe not, but he'll be six feet under, Henry doesn't watch out.' "

The man goes on to observe the crux of the matter: " 'Yep, he's a good boy. Not his boy though.' " Flynn is Henry's boy and he dotes on him, as does Tom. But Henry likes to drink and at the end of the day he sends the boys off with a man in a hurry who drops them at an unfamiliar junction and points the way to town. The boys are soon lost. "The road wound down through a stand of gnarled of swamp gum where the darkness was thickening, great drifts of it piling up in the undergrowth. They could hear rustling, whispering sounds coming from behind the roadside trees."

Tom keeps his rising panic from Flynn, but when his attention is caught by a kangaroo lying by the side of the road, Flynn disappears into the bush. "[Tom] looked up and around, as if he might be up a tree, or hanging in the air, glowing, like a small moon, but he was gone, and there were only so many times you could look in the same places."

Meanwhile, Grace, nubile daughter of the sheriff, Pop Mathers, idles away her afternoon with her best friend Darcy Steele, the bully's sister. Darcy is wild and mercurial, full of life and trouble, but the afternoon ends with her in desperate tears, refusing to tell her friend why. The next day Grace, still hurt by Darcy's rejection, goes along with the search party her father has organized for the lost boys. Exhausted by the bush and skittish from the predatory leers of Darcy's father, she glimpses a strange, unkempt tramp (who had earlier begged food from Tom's house), but says nothing to Pop.

Point of view shifts from the steady, sober sheriff and the search party to Tom, who finds Flynn, but not the way home. Both are growing weaker with hunger and fear, but Tom swears to Flynn he will get him home. Days pass and the search party is disbanded before Tom stumbles up to a farmhouse, alone, with no memory of what happened to Flynn. From Henry, Tom's homecoming gift is a severe beating.

The novel's second section opens in Sydney as Gibson, a hung-over, broken down detective, is called to the scene of a suicide - Darcy Steele. The case strikes a chord with Gibson whose own sister committed suicide years before, her note destroyed by the elements before her body was found. Darcy has left no note and Gibson follows the case to Angel Rock where Flynn is still missing and Tom, along with his shattered mother, has taken shelter with the sheriff's family. Gibson's questions probe at old wounds, and grubby secrets are dragged piecemeal from the murk of the past - religious fanaticism, obsessive love, angry rivalries, another young girl's long-ago death, old grudges.

Williams' gift for character is subtle and winning. He captures the doubts and indecision that go to the core of the most confident person. Everyone struggles, from sad, tormented Tom to thoughtful, kind Pop Mathers. The Steele family is almost too trashy to be believed, but their past makes their descent credible. Tom and Grace, becoming friends, feel their way, groping in the dark of a past kept hidden from them and the future of persons they have not yet become. Haunted Tom, desperate with guilt, knows moments of soaring joy, hope and affection.

Williams relies on atmospheric prose and emerging characterizations to create a human story fraught with tension. Shifting points of view heighten suspense, but it's the adult characters with their hard shells and undercurrents of menace, fear, and uncertainty, and the children with their promise and vulnerabilities that drive the narrative. For all its grim subject matter, "Angel Rock" is too human to be bleak.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: This book is exceptional on every level, from its characterizations, to its narrative structure, to its plotting. The characters in particular are so finely wrought that each one, no matter how minor, is very real. Especially appealing are young Tom who is at the heart of this book: a kind and sensitive boy with a great depth of feeling, and Gibson, the detective from Sydney who has come to Angel Rock for reasons both known and unknown; a man of many sorrows who is none the less capable of gentleness and sympathy. These two characters connect in some way with everyone else in this wonderfully well-told tale of terrible loss and of life in a small Australian town.

Nothing in Angel Rock, either the fictional town or the book, is predictable. Good people have bad moments; bad people have good moments. Everything meshes into a cohesive tale that is, in essence, about family dynamics and their long-term effects both good and bad on children. This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read; the last being Cold Mountain. There is no comparison between the two novels--merely a great gap in time.

Darren Williams is a splendid writer, with great insight into human behavior and an understanding of how the smallest kindness to an adult or a child can have a lifetime's impact, and how a misplaced grudge can grow until it obliterates the landscape.
Most highly recommended.