Review: A Powerful Novel with Great Depth
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 16, 2014
They say “a picture paints a thousand words” but in the case of Alex Miller, his words paint a thousand pictures!  His evocative descriptions of the Queensland landscape bring it into such keen perspective that it almost becomes a character in the story with Bobby Blue, his main character, an uneducated man, telling us the story in the only way he knows how – in simple language that resonates with deep insight into the events leading up to that fateful day.Our narrator, Bobby Blewitt, or as his mother called him, Bobby Blue, son of a stockman, is twenty years old.  He’s always lived in Mount Hay - in fact Mount Hay, mustering and being in the bush are the things he knows best.  With his father having recently passed on though, Bobby has been placed in a position where he needs to secure himself work so that he can survive."...the old days was over for us and I needed to look around and find a new way for myself to make a living.  The stations would have been happy to put me on and I might have stuck with the cattle work but the job with the new constable come up just then and I thought I would give it a go just for a short time.  I did not expect things to work out the way they did."Daniel Collins is the new local constable.  A man who fought in Papua New Guinea and originally from the coast, he relocates to Mount Hay with his wife and two daughters, taking up residence as the local policeman.When Bobby takes up employment with Daniel, some of the perks include him moving into a room at the watch house where he finds himself with a roof over his head and food in his belly.  Daniel's oldest daughter, Irie, teaches him to read and write, but she also awakens something deeper within him.  Uneducated or not, he is well aware that her age, as well as love between him and a girl of her social standing, would be forbidden!Ben Tobin has been Bobby’s mate since they were youngsters, more like a brother to him than his own, but when an incident occurs in which the two young Collins’ girls disappear and it is believed that Ben has kidnapped them, Bobby finds himself torn between loyalty to his long-time friend, a sense of duty to his new boss and love like no other as he is placed in the midst of a sequence of tragic events triggered by a well-meaning man born and bred on the coast but unschooled in the ways of the bush.Coal Creek is the first Alex Miller book I have read and it drew me in from the first page.  Miller’s rich detailing of the landscape and the 1950's life in general brings the wild nature of outback Queensland to life but it is Bobby Blue’s distinct voice that carries this novel.  Striking in its simplicity and with the slow, easy cadence of those who have grown up in the outback, the prose is enhanced by the lack of quoted language, with this semi-literate cattleman jumping in to the telling of all the events which have brought him to this place and time.Drawing deeply on his own experiences working in the outback, Miller has created a memorable character in Bobby Blue as he takes us to the heart of the stone country, giving us a novel overflowing with the love of family and the memories we carry with us, the limits to which friendship, honour and loyalty can be tested and last but not least, the beauty of love in all its forms.Coal Creek is a powerful novel with great depth – one which should be savoured - and I wish to thank The Reading Room for providing me with a hard copy for review.