How far would your government go?
A right-wing US president has withdrawn America from the Middle East and the UN. Daesh has a thoroughfare to the sea and China is Australia's newest ally. When a bomb goes off in remote Tasmania, Astrid Coleman agrees to return home to help her brother before an upcoming election. But this is no simple task. Her brother and sister are on either side of politics, the community is full of conspiracy theories, and her father is quoting Shakespeare. Only on Bruny does the world seem sane.
Until Astrid discovers how far the government is willing to go.
Bruny, Heather Rose (review by Andrea Thompson)
A comment often made about BRUNY is that readers going in did not know it was going to be such a political read. BRUNY is one of those works that very effectively puts the frighteners on for many fronts; climate change, politics, foreign investment, cultural divides – swing the proverbial, you’ll find it here.
The building of a bridge between mainland Tasmania and Bruny Island is a contentious issue with many island residents not seeing the point of making a part of the world that should be protected that so much more accessible. Called back home by the twin powers that rule her world – family and politics – Astrid Coleman needs to serve two masters with her latest assignment. The Coleman family is nothing if not forward thinking, and having a brother as the Premier and a sister as the Opposition Leader has long been one of the reasons that Astrid seldom goes back to Tasmania.
A bombing on the incomplete bridge project needs some careful handling, and Premier John Coleman (JC) is conscious of the need to circle the wagons, keeping information to the close few that he trusts. Astrid is not convinced that the story being peddled to the public is truthful and quietly determines to carve out her own path to the truth.
It’s a testament to the skill of the author Heather Rose that so much is included in a novel set in a part of the world that few outside of Australia would be aware actually exists. Which would seem to be exactly how the Tasmanians would prefer Bruny Island to be – left to its own devices and not on anyone’s radar. BRUNY presents us with just a small step to the left of what the geopolitical landscape could become with just a few changes in government, a few less sensible minds in power. Are we there already? Possibly. Located off the south eastern side of mainland Tasmania, Bruny Island is perhaps not the first place your mind would immediately go to if you were thinking of likely hot spots for terrorist activities. This could change after reading BRUNY.
BRUNY is a little hard to classify because of how issue drenched it is - a little romance, lots of intrigue, family dramas and evolving personal relationships are all thrown into the mix. This is not to say that the novel is haphazardly constructed as BRUNY definitely has an evolution in how the lead character realizes what is most important as she information gathers. BRUNY leads us into thinking that all the crappy things happening in the world right now could just as easily result in us all experiencing a whole host of similar catastrophes. This may come to be in part due to our collective inattention to insidious change, and our complacency in addressing those changes that are happening incrementally right in front of us.
BRUNY is the perfect novel for intelligent value discussions about what Australians do or should hold dear, but let’s be honest, it is triggering to read of all our fears playing out on home soil. If you are one of those people who curates their Twitter feed like Edward Scissorhands away from anything to do with climate change or the antics of the multiple buffoons currently running powerful countries, reading BRUNY will likely ping off all your self-preservative alarms. It may also provoke you into questioning what your own values might be, should you ever be in a similar place to the Tasmanians we encounter in this thought provoking work of fiction. The people of BRUNY have a lot more to lose than just their faith in their democratically elected leaders. BRUNY is a tense work of fiction that will slap its readers in the face as to how close and possible it feels, in our current cultural and political landscape.
Bruny, Heather Rose
BRUNY is a book which unfortunately (stupidly) sat in the reading piles here for, it turns out, way too long. Luckily our F2F bookclub was scheduled to read it last month, and I've never been so pleased that something was jolted out of stasis and into the current pile. It was, quite simply, fabulous reading. Even allowing for a bit of a technical hiccup at the end, everything else about BRUNY was absolutely perfect for this reader (and for the majority of the bookclub as well).
Set in Tasmania in a time period that could be anything between now, and any point in the future, this is a thriller that touches on politics, corruption, conspiracy, climate change, family tensions and connection, and the ever present threat of loss of autonomy and control (personal, place, and mindset). It does it all from the viewpoint of a family deeply embedded in local political and activist life. A grandfather unionist, a father politician, and now a son who is Liberal premier, a daughter who is the Leader of the Opposition, and a twin sister who is a professional negotiator, returning to the State she grew up in to assist her brother after a bomb attempts to destroy his big infrastructure program - a huge bridge between "mainland" Tasmania and the idyllic island of Bruny.
There's a lot going on in BRUNY and it's a bit of a genre buster. Part political commentary, part thriller, there's romance and family drama, delivered with dystopian elements, in a nicely laid back, verging on delightfully sarcastic style in places. The characters are brilliantly conceived and executed, and the tensions and family loyalties and interactions are utterly believable. There's humour, even laugh out loud moments, and there's a lot of cleverly developed threat and intrigue at the same time. It's fascinating how the tensions between the people of the island of Bruny and the main island perfectly mirror those between Tasmania and the mainland of Australia. BRUNY also addresses race relations and xenophobia, the exploitation of workers, feminism and the struggle that is coming to terms with ageing and terminal illness. If you're a reader that's normally decidedly leery of anything romantically inclined, here it's nicely low key, and somehow sort of felt right that novel that's mashing together so many genre elements, would include a bit of will they / won't they. In the same way if dystopian has you searching for the exits, there's nothing other-worldly about this version - making it even more chilling as a result.
What's most fascinating about BRUNY overall is the way that the timeline of the novel could be anywhere from now to any point in the future. Towards the end of the story, things get very complicated for everyone when Tasmania is hit by a cyclone, and I have to confess the idea of a cyclone that far down the globe didn't make me blink for a nanosecond (and then the week after that areas of WA never previously regarded as likely were hit by a cyclone and the third thought I had was, well BRUNY nailed that as well....).
At the heart of the whole thing though is the affect that politics and differing viewpoints have within the central Coleman family and the way that is reflected in the wider community. Development, exploitation, money above well-being, 'jobs and growth' in spite of environmental limitations, it's all here. The style is pitch-perfect though, never telling, showing the reader the eventualities, presenting scenarios that were real, believable and impossible to discount. At one point it started to feel less fictional thriller, more documentary.
As a side point, this was a novel that caused a rather unexpected event in our F2F bookclub gathering. Normally when we all love a book, the conversation turns to other things. This time it kept coming back to BRUNY, and everyone had something that resonated so strongly, so viscerally that they had to talk about it.