The Water Underneath

Kate Lyons (author)

Allen&Unwin, Australia: 2001; 284pp

ISBN: 1865084182

Genres: crime/mystery, realistic fiction

Issues: family,  racism, relationships, social condition

Runner Up, Australian/Vogel Literary Award, 1999.

‘They dragged her out of the lake at dawn. No jaw, one eye socket like some strange fish. The water was closing and closing, the centre blank as the tissue of a scar. Then, in a place a thousand miles from an ocean, they found something which might have been a seashell but which they knew was not. The lake gave birth regretfully, washing her up in slow burps.'

A young woman and her baby go missing, never found, never heard from again.

The only clues are provided by a simpleton, who saw a man in a hat throwing something into the river. This, in a town where all men wear hats. Twenty years later a few human bones are washed out of the lake during heavy rains and the gossip starts again. This is the story of those involved in the mystery - the husband, the child, her aunt and uncle, and the community. The community that ostracised the young woman in the first place but refuse to take any responsibility for her unhappiness or her disappearance.

Thus begins this remarkable first novel from Kate Lyons. It is the story of three women in an outback mining town in New South Wales. Connected by blood, but separated by upbringing, age and skin colour, the story is told through their eyes. There is Mavis Kelly, terribly correct, very strict, determined to Do The Right Thing, and ostentatiously burdened by the duties she takes upon herself. There is the unhappy Von, always a mystery to the town, having simply appeared one day as part of the Kelly household. And there is Ruth, Von's daughter, who is still trying to work out who she is and where she belongs. All very different, all in their own way unhappy and confused, these three women are tied together by the mysterious Frank, whose silence has protected him but provided endless pain for those who love him.

In lyrical prose and unhurried narrative, Lyons immerses the reader in the conflicts that lie underneath the superficial simplicity of the mining town. Characters, motivations, relationships, family history, all emerge slowly, revealed gradually as the narrative perspective changes, different stages shown through the eyes of each of the three women. Mavis is the artificial front of the town, how it believes itself to be, wants to be, with strong views on appropriate behaviour and a woman's place. Von is the hidden aspects of her society, misunderstood, tormented by the uncomfortable restlessness that must beset all those who try to be something they are not in order to propitiate their society. Ruth is the offspring of both perspectives and her isolation and yearning for truth demonstrate the need for change, for a resolution between the past and the present so that we can all move forward into the future.