Review of THE SUN WALKS DOWN by Fiona McFarlane

3 Stars

Despite its evocative prose, this book didn’t resonate with me.

The setting is the span of a week in September of 1883 in the outback of South Australia.  A dust storm sweeps through the small town of Fairly and six-year-old Denny Wallace goes missing from his parents’ nearby farm.  The reader gets to spend the week of the search with various people who live in Fairly and its environs. 

The perspectives of so many people are given:  Denny; Mary, Denny’s mother; Mathew, Denny’s father; Cissy, one of Denny’s five sisters; Robert, the town’s police constable; Minna, Robert’s wife; Wilhelmina, Minna’s mother; Sergeant Foster, who arrives to take charge of the official search; Joanna Axam, the widow of an English aristocrat who started a sheep ranch in the area; George and Ralph Axam, Joanna’s sons; Karl and Bess Rapp, Swedish artists traveling through the area; an Afghan cameleer; the town’s prostitute; Billy Rough, Mathew’s Indigenous farmhand; Mary’s father; Mary’s stepmother; and the local vicar.  And this is not a complete list!

There is actually very little plot, though there is a lot of description of landscape.  What are also included are the anxieties, hopes and dreams, beliefs, accomplishments, and failures of many of the characters.  The problem for me was connecting with any of the characters because the sheer number of them makes that difficult.  Furthermore, few of the characters are likeable.  Everyone seems self-serving.  There’s a woman, a newlywed, who is obsessed with sex, and not only with her husband; there’s a rich woman who has so much yet wants to steal a cloak from an Aboriginal tracker; and there’s a woman who adds to a family’s pain to fulfill her artistic ambitions.  And so many of the white settlers are condescending to the Aboriginal Peoples. 

What I found most interesting was the examination of the relationship between the colonizers and Australia’s Indigenous Peoples.  It is obvious that the Whites have tried to shape the land to their needs, but are largely unsuccessful because of their limited understanding of that land.  The Aboriginals are very much in tune with nature, but the Whites tend to be dismissive and condescending.  Billy, for example, is careful never to antagonize by doing something that might suggest to a white person that he is more skilled.  Sergeant Foster becomes upset when he learns that his native trackers have been given the same wine as he.  Many of the employees on the Axam sheep farm are Aboriginal, but George thinks of them as unreliable:  “He thinks of them as disposed to laziness (they are, for example, disinclined to engage in hard physical labour during the hottest part of a hot day).”  George’s father Henry insisted on teaching Billy skills he felt he’d need in his life at Henry’s side and prevented Billy from speaking his native language and completing his initiation ceremonies and becoming a full elder in his tribe. 

As I stated earlier, I can appreciate how well-written the book is, but the presence of so many characters and so many viewpoints means I found it difficult to connect with anyone.  Except for Denny’s fate, I remained indifferent to what might happen to people.  I would have enjoyed a book focusing on Billy Rough and his role in and perspective on the search for Denny; he seems to have a unique understanding of the sensitive young boy, having “noticed Denny’s watchful way of being in the world . . . the way he speaks to invisible things.”

This book will undoubtedly appeal to some readers, but it didn’t work for me.