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A review by jacki_f
Goodwood by Holly Throsby
3.0
Goodwood is a small town in rural New South Wales, Australia. Set in the early 1990s, this is both a mystery about the disappearance of two members of the community and a coming of age story for our narrator, 17 year old Jean White. It's a very Australian novel, full of small town atmosphere and riddled with the Australian vernacular.
The storyline focuses on the disappearance of a local girl, 18 year old Rosie White. A week later the local butcher also disappears while fishing on the lake. "Two people from Goodwood - two very different people - inexplicably gone. And the rest of town holding its breath."
I liked this book, but the missing girl in a rural Australian town is becoming quite the genre and I didn't think this was as strong as some of the others I've read. The book is partly narrated by Jean and I couldn't work out if it was all being told by Jean (even though she couldn't have known all the details) or whether part was an omnipresent narrator, albeit one with Jean's way of looking at the world. Also, the balance between the mysteries and Jean's life sat kind of uneasily. While at the end the mysteries are solved, they are almost a throwaway and it feels like Jean was the one that we were meant to be focused on all along - but she's just not that interesting a character.
The other problem I had with the book is that there are so many characters. We met virtually everyone in the town and I had problems keeping them all straight in my mind. At the front of the book is a hand drawn map of the town but I felt like it would have been more useful to have a list of who was who so that I wasn't always trying to remember which family individual characters belonged to.
It had a great sense of place and some interesting characters but I don't think there is anything that will stay with me about this book.
The storyline focuses on the disappearance of a local girl, 18 year old Rosie White. A week later the local butcher also disappears while fishing on the lake. "Two people from Goodwood - two very different people - inexplicably gone. And the rest of town holding its breath."
I liked this book, but the missing girl in a rural Australian town is becoming quite the genre and I didn't think this was as strong as some of the others I've read. The book is partly narrated by Jean and I couldn't work out if it was all being told by Jean (even though she couldn't have known all the details) or whether part was an omnipresent narrator, albeit one with Jean's way of looking at the world. Also, the balance between the mysteries and Jean's life sat kind of uneasily. While at the end the mysteries are solved, they are almost a throwaway and it feels like Jean was the one that we were meant to be focused on all along - but she's just not that interesting a character.
The other problem I had with the book is that there are so many characters. We met virtually everyone in the town and I had problems keeping them all straight in my mind. At the front of the book is a hand drawn map of the town but I felt like it would have been more useful to have a list of who was who so that I wasn't always trying to remember which family individual characters belonged to.
It had a great sense of place and some interesting characters but I don't think there is anything that will stay with me about this book.