After his Vogel-winning, sex, sweat and scratching debut Praise and its prequel/sequel 1988, McGahan left his grungy youth behind with  Last Drinks, an epic of crime and corruption in the bad old Bjelke-Petersen days. His latest novel is an epic of a different sort, a kind of Australian pastoral Gothic. A plot summary reads like a Brontë novel transplanted to the Darling Downs in the 1990s: feckless father dies due to his own carelessness; nervy mother is left penniless in charge of sensitive boy; mysterious uncle takes them on as a charity case; big, derelict house; grouchy housekeeper; family secrets etc. While there is nothing wrong with using a familiar plot structure as an armature to hang a contemporary novel on, it needs to be matched with likable characters, a new twist and/or compelling writing in order to work and hold the reader’s interest. Sadly, The White Earth falls down on all these counts. By the time the story hots up-and it does head in quite an unexpected direction-the reader is almost halfway into a substantial book. I fear many will struggle to get that far.

Tim Coronel is AB&P’s assistant editor

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