Review: An absolute pleasure to read
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 18, 2014
The Railwayman’s Wife is the second novel by Australian author, Ashley Hay. It is set in Thirroul, on the south coast of New South Wales, in 1948. Living in post-war New South Wales with her husband, Mackenzie and her ten-year-old daughter, Isabel, Anikka Lachlan  counts herself fortunate to have survived the war without the losses suffered by so many. But then Mac, a railwayman, is killed in a train accident, and Ani’s life suddenly becomes unrecognisable. She is offered a job in the Railway Institute Library, where she encounters many of the village’s residents including the frequently abrasive war veteran, Dr Frank Draper, the often dismissive Iris McKinnon and her rather shy brother, Roy, a published war poet. Hay’s narrative switches between events that immediately precede Mac’s death and the year that follows, and flashbacks to significant fragments of Ani and Mac’s history. Ani discovers a Mac she barely recognises from chance bits of conversation and second-hand anecdotes, (“There’s an anxious space between not knowing if you’ve forgotten something, or if you never knew.”) but also finds that life goes on. Hay’s second novel, like her first, is filled with beautiful prose, so that locals of the area will be doubly delighted with the depiction of the paradise they call their own. “And then there’s the air, the nor’-easters that play along the shoreline; the westerlies that dump fractious moods over the edge of the escarpment; the smoky draughts in late spring and summer that telegraph bushfires and then spur them on. There are soft sea breezes that tease and tickle with lightest scent of salty water. There are southerly busters, powerful fronts that push up the coast to break open the heat of the day—they smell clean and crisp, and Ani pushes her nose hungrily into hot afternoons in search of their coming” and “Her blond hair so bright, it looked lit from within” and “..the afternoon’s light hits that point before sunset where it softens and swells sometimes into a few minutes of rounder, warmer illumination. Through the window, the greens of the trees thicken slightly; the shadows lengthen, and the sky takes on a fuller shade of blue. The mountain, diminished at midday, surges again to its full height; the clouds flare a brighter white” are but a few examples. Hay expertly renders the feel of the late forties in a small Australian coastal village; her characters have depth and appeal; her dialogue is credible and the plot contains hope and heartache in equal measure. An absolute pleasure to read.