Ash mountain by Helen Fitzgerald

Fran Collins is a single mother who returns to her hometown of Ash Mountain to care for her terminally ill father. Fran does not want to go back, she hates Ash Mountain and has bad memories of the place. But she’s in a rut in her life anyway, having suffered both the breakdown of her relationship and being stuck in a dead-end job, and so can think of no excuse to put off her responsibilities to her terminally ill father. 

Upon returning with her teenage daughter, it isn’t long before the memories come flooding back. Ash Mountain is not the sort of place where the past stays buried for long. Like many a rural community, people know each other’s business and have very long memories. All this is not helped by the fact that it’s the height of a broiling summer, and set in Australia as this novel is, that can mean the threat of brush fires. As one such event breaks out,  the past threatens the present and future, the tension notches up, and things come to ahead.

Australian fiction is experiencing a surge in the same way that nordic noir did a few years back. Novels such as Jane Harper’s The Dry and Chris Hammer’s Scrublands have wet people’s appetites for fiction set under the scorching sun of Australia’s outback. Ash Mountain is not a crime novel as such, more a tense drama about a community on the edge, but is as atmospheric as Harper’s and Hammer’s novels. This is a beautifully written book and while I’ve never been to Australia so can’t say from first-hand experience, I felt it really captured and evoked an atmosphere of place (how accurate it is, is for others to say).

What I can speak to is the novel’s portrayal of a sense of life in a small town. I lived in a very small village for a good few years and while there was nothing sinister going on (at least I hope not), people did all know each other’s business and did have long memories of other families' histories. As someone who moved there from an urban environment, I found it quite a culture shock. This sense of roots, something that doesn’t exist in a city, can be hugely beneficial in that it fosters community spirit. It can also be intrusive and suffocating, especially for an outsider such as the protagonist Fran Collins (while she grew up in Ash Mountain, she moved away and then returned, so is very much considered an outsider). 

Ash Mountain is a beautifully written novel with a stark sense of place and atmosphere. A wonderful read.

4 out of 5 stars