Review: The Survivors, Jane Harper

There have been three more novels from Australian journalist-turned-author Jane Harper in the five years since her blockbuster The Dry swept onto the national bestseller lists, where it remains to this day.

But I haven’t kept up with them, so when I dropped into Red Kangaroo Books in Alice Springs on a dusty hot August day, I decided I’d not start with the sequel to The Dry but simply pick up her standalone new release, The Survivors, knowing nothing of setting or premise.

Imagine my delight, then, on finally cracking it when we got to Tasmania’s Bruny Island, to discover it’s set in a Tasmanian coastal country town – just like the one I found myself in. A town tiny and welcoming on a human scale, yet set in vast, spectacular scenery. The result: an odd clashing of domestic comfort with a sense of brutal, icy wildness.

This is exactly the uneasy mood Harper evokes in her thriller following new young father Kieran, who along with his wife Mia from Sydney to visit his own mother and father at their country hometown in Tassie, to introduce them to his baby daughter. Going back home is never a comfortable visit for Kieran, as shocking events during a huge storm 12 years ago fractured his relationships not only with his parents, but with much of the rest of the community. And when he and Mia arrive, already tense and braced for conflict, it is just in time for a fresh horror to unfold: disturbing echoes of the events of that long-ago storm threaten to rip open the town's old wounds and bring long-submerged secrets to the surface.

A tale of how people let go of old griefs and find reasons to move forward, The Survivors is at once a page-turner and a sensitive portrait of an atmospheric part of Australia that lends itself beautifully to the burgeoning genre of Australian Gothic. Not as momentous and haunting as The Dry, and its ending is not so impactful, but still a solid and satisfying thriller from one of Australia’s biggest new authors. If you’re thinking of Christmas gifts already, this is a safe bet for men or women.