Book Review: “The Sun Walks Down” by Fiona McFarlane
The Missing
A six-year-old boy goes missing in the Australian outback. Sounds like the premise for a propulsive thriller? Not so fast! Fiona McFarlane’s The Sun Walks Down is a work of literary fiction, so it’s much more refined than your standard mystery novels. The story is set in the late 19th century and doesn’t fixate so much on the missing boy, but rather on the family and hangers-on who go out looking for him and the various human interactions and politics that come to the fore. There’s a wealthy widow who covets the blanket of an Aboriginal tracker and will go to deceptive lengths to get it. There’s another Aboriginal tracker who comes to blows with the missing boy’s father. A recently married young woman starts sleeping around on her police officer husband who joins in the search and thus has a lot of alone time on her hands. A visiting Swedish painter argues with his English wife as to how to capture the essence of art. These stories and more populate the tale, so the plot about the missing boy is, in some ways, merely a framing device. Therefore, I think I can say that The Sun Walks Down will be an acquired taste for many. Not that it is a bad novel — far from it — but this is the sort of thing that will have a long shelf life because most readers may feel as I did and that feeling was, once finished reading this book, it needed to be re-read to pick up on all of the nuances that might have been missed on the first read through.
Given the book’s title, interested readers might want to know that the sun is also a character in this book. It relentlessly beats down on the arid desert of the novel’s setting, and glows an angry red, filling the sky with all sorts of violets, greens, blues, yellows, and oranges as it does so. It disappears for a day to give way to a rainstorm that is as heavy as a cats and dogs downpour. It also disappears into a dust storm that claims the young boy and gets him lost and turned around from the direction of his own home. The sun, when it isn’t hiding or covering the other half of the earth at night, is almost omnipresent, acting as a puppeteer of sorts as people try to live in the presence of this magnificent orb. It radiates wave after wave of ultraviolet rays, and if you think I’m guilty of overkill here, I’m trying to do service to this book and its poetic description of the climate and weather of the Australian interior. That’s apt, as this is also a book about interiors: the hidden lives of Australian Aboriginals who look with disdain on their white masters, and the absurdity of the lives of the whites who appear to be never quite happy with what they have or want.
While this is a rich and intoxicating book, it can also be a bit on the dry side. There are narratives involving a German prostitute and Afghan traders that detract rather than compel. (A scene where camels show up in the desert had me wondering at first if there was a misprint in the copy of the book I was given by a publicist.) This is also a novel with a large cast of characters: the family of the young boy who goes missing totals seven siblings, six of them girls. (So, try and keep all of those characters straight!) Some characters are introduced — such as a fretful vicar — who don’t have an awful lot to do with the plot and we never find out what happens to them for the minor entrance they have been given. At some 350 pages in length, this is a story that could double the length of the novel to be told. (Alternatively, it probably also could be pared back some as the book, at times, feels overlong.) Still, despite these quibbles, and I want to be charitable and not quite as churlish as I may seem, The Sun Walks Down is an interesting read. It’s a volume that you must spend some time thinking about — to wit, I waited nearly a day after finishing this book before penning my thoughts on it, instead of barrelling forward as soon as I was done — and, again, would probably benefit from a second readthrough. It would also help if you knew something about the terrain and political background of the region this book is set.
All of this said and done, though, The Sun Walks Down is a minor masterpiece and an astonishing story told in a new way. I honestly don’t know what else to say beyond that. This is the type of book that you’re going to fall in love with (due to its poetic voice) or lose patience with (as the lost boy narrative gets jettisoned from time to time). However, if you’re looking for a rich and magnificent read, you could probably do no better than crack open this one. Again, while it’s not perfect, and everyone may find certain things to nitpick at, it is a commendable story about human lives in an insufferable region of the planet. It’s always good to read authors from the lower half of the earth, and right the power balance of those writers working in some obscurity “Down Under.” In a sense, then, The Sun Walks Down is the sort of book that will turn the tables on the North American, European, or Asian reader. Put another way, this is a book that will turn your world upside down. If that sounds sort of like an experience you want to have when reading a book, I can think of no finer novel to have that effect on you. The Sun Walks Down is startling and is recommended for those with a curiosity about all things Australian under the burning star at the center of our solar system.
Fiona McFarlane’s The Sun Walks Down will be published in trade paperback by Picador on February 13, 2024.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
