The Hidden, Bryan Brown

Two novels, and one collection of short stories in now and I think we can all agree Bryan Brown has a "style". Short, clipped sentences, dry as dust observations, dark and cunning humour and a sense of fringe communities that are quite content with their little eccentric weirdo selves. Although, to be fair, THE HIDDEN, also comes with a pretty hefty ick factor. If you're not a fan of ridiculously horny people behaving like ridiculously horny people with tedious consistency, then this may not be the novel for you. And if you're horrified by cockfighting and the low life scum that inhabit that particular dark little recess of human behaviour, then definitely head into this one pre-warned.

Having been a huge fan of Brown's two earlier offerings SWEET JIMMY (the short story collection) and THE DROWNING (the first novel), then you may have been as keen as me to pick up THE HIDDEN. In the end, it all did come together, but the journey to that ending was one of considerable ups and downs. As the story commences you do get an awful lot of characters thrown at you with little to no context, and it has to be said, an increasingly high level of that sexual tension ick. If everyone in this community is as constantly on the hunt for a sexual partner as the opening third of this novel indicates, then I'd be tempted to question what they're putting in the local water supply. Of course, that doesn't include the local weirdo who is using covert cameras to get his kicks watching local women in their bedrooms and bathrooms. Mind you, the subtext seemed to be that he wasn't quite as bad as the poor, now dead, drug addict who was supporting her habit by working as a sex worker. There was a whiff of misogyny there that was ... well ... let's go with disappointing.

But to be honest by that stage I was distracted by cockfighting and the idea that this was just a bit of a misguided bloke trying to do right by his new Asian bride, and the she'll be right bloke that set him on the straight and narrow oh so gently. I was rapidly heading less into disappointed and more into profoundly bloody annoyed territory by then.

I get that this was quirky, and a bit out there, and all a bit nudge nudge wink wink, which was part of the considerable appeal of SWEET JIMMY to be frank, but this time, I was spinning from "convinced" to "what the" moments so frequently I got dizzy. Given I have a well documented aversion to animal cruelty, and I do so love my roosters (all 8 of them at the time of writing), added to that ick thing, and I'd stick THE HIDDEN firmly in the YMMV category.