A Darker Music won the inaugural CAL Scribe Fiction Prize in 2010, for Australian writers over 35, regardless of publishing history. The novel is the first publication for Maris Morton – at age 72 – a considerable achievement.

Still, as I know a dozen or more fine writers – published and unpublished – who entered the award without success, I’m sure I wasn’t the only reader who muttered “it better be good.”

A Darker Music is a decent enough story. Mary takes a temporary housekeeping job at Downe, a famous Merino stud in Western Australia. When she arrives, however, she finds the homestead in decline and the owner’s wife, Clio, seriously ill, barely venturing from her room. Mary’s job is to feed Clio’s taciturn and often absent husband, Paul, and son, Martin, and prepare the house for Martin’s upcoming wedding. Family secrets and quiet tragedy play out against a rural Australian backdrop.

Clio gradually emerges from her room, drawn by Mary’s cooking, and the women become friends. Clio’s story is revealed over meals and cups of tea, with Mary playing the listening detective role. The novel is not the “gripping mystery” described on the blurb, but a gently unfolding family saga.

Clio and Mary’s growing friendship is warm and engaging, with Mary’s initial sense of isolation deftly echoing Clio’s. Some of the minor characters are nicely captured, like Young Gayleen and ‘sheep man’ Angus. The novel really warms up when Mary must adapt her cooking skills to feed the shearers. Paul and Martin, however, spend little time on the page, often (perhaps too conveniently) absent. As a result, their characters do not feel fully fleshed out or convincing, particularly Paul, who comes close to caricature.

A Darker Music’s binding theme, as the title suggests, is music. Clio was once a talented viola player and Mary’s appreciation for music helps draw out this backstory: the novel’s melancholy highpoint. The musical motif is not, however, echoed on deeper levels or embedded in the story through language and imagery in the way of Janette Turner Hospital’s Orpheus Lost or Anna Goldsworthy’s memoir, Piano Lessons.

The novel’s evocation of the rural setting, garden, and life on the property, are convincing, although not quite taking the reader “into the heart of rural Western Australia,” as the blurb promises. The stifling atmosphere of the homestead in decline is most effectively captured, showing not just a family split apart but a traditional way of rural life on the wane.

Scribe is apparently aiming for a more ‘popular fiction’ stream than literary with this award. Nonetheless, with 534 novels entered in the competition, it is difficult to understand why A Darker Music was chosen as the ‘standout’ winner. There is rather too much telling and the dialogue is over-padded with obvious question and answer format. A tighter edit would have done this story more justice.

About the Author

Inga Simpson is a writer and reviewer, and one of the directors of Olvar Wood Writers Retreat. You can read more about her on her blog, Notes from Olvar Wood.

***

issue 10:04 | archives by category | archives by author