The best book I read this month is a mystery set in a dying Australian town. Jane Harper’s The Dry was published a few years ago and was recently made into a movie on Amazon Prime. It follows Australian federal agent Aaron Falk as he investigates the deaths of his childhood best friend and the friend’s family. I can’t speak for the film adaptation, but the book was gripping. I finished it in a weekend. Once I started, I could not put it down.
The story takes place in a small farming town suffering an extreme drought (hence, the title). The town’s desperation feeds the tension in the book. As a reader, I could feel that the town was on the brink, surviving by little more than a frayed shoestring. Add to that the unexpected murder of a family and the memory of the unsolved murder of a teen girl and The Dry is born.
Harper’s sparse prose kept the focus on the unrelenting tension of the story, and the twists and turns of the mystery were masterful, with plenty of expected and unexpected turns.
Honorable Mention: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Until I started The Dry, I was sure my choice for best book of the month was going to be Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. I love Shakespeare, so of course I picked up this book, which is a fictional account of Shakespeare’s marriage and the death of his son Hamnet. Scholars believe that Hamnet’s death inspired Shakespeare to write Hamlet., and O’Farrell’s story follows this line of thinking. (At the time, the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable.)
Hamnet was beautiful and heartbreaking. In contrast with Harper’s sparse prose and harsh mood in The Dry, O’Farrell’s prose is lyrical and poetic, with plenty of long sentences to get lost in, creating a softer mood.
But if you’re expecting a book with Shakespeare as a main character, Hamnet will disappoint you. The Bard is a minor character in this tale and appears only sporadically. The focus instead is on the family he left behind, especially his wife Anne (aka Agnes). The vast majority of the book takes place in Stratford. We don’t see Shakespeare in London or the theatre until the end of the book, when his wife leaves Stratford to see him and his new play, and that scene packs a powerful emotional punch.