10/10/2022
In McFarlane’s expansive latest (after The High Places), the search for a missing boy in the Australian outback in 1883 casts lights on the tensions roiling beneath the surface of the English colony. One day, six-year-old Denny Wallace goes for a walk and disappears into a dust storm. Members of the small farming community help Denny’s parents, Mathew and Mary, look for their son. Among the teeming cast are Minna Baumann, a newlywed who pines for her constable husband, Robert, after he joins the search party; Mr. Daniels, the sickly local vicar who is suspected of knowing what happened to Danny; Karl and Bess Rapp, itinerant artists who have come to paint the desert sunset; Cissy Wallace, one of Denny’s five sisters, who has her sexual awakening as a result of the search; and Jimmy Possum, an Aboriginal tracker whose talismanic cloak is coveted by Mrs. Axam, the community’s matriarch. But will their combined efforts lead to Denny’s ultimate rescue? Though there isn’t much of a plot, the vivid descriptions of the landscape, a lived-in feeling community, dozens of well-defined characters, and an honest look at the uneasy relationship between settlers and Australia’s Indigenous population carry the reader along. Fans of Richard Flanagan and Peter Carey will love this. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Susanna Lea Assoc. (Feb.)
McFarlane’s empathy, her delicious facility with language, and her keen insight into human nature, rendered in the smallest brushstrokes that eventually build into a complete picture, are all here, undiminished.”
—Jennifer Bort Yacovissi, The Washington Independent Review of Books
“A mysterious and fluid vision of the country’s Aboriginal lore, its ancient contours and its unpredictable weather . . . A beguiling novel, not just of ideas about history and place but of fiercely beautiful translations.”
—Elizabeth Lowry, The Guardian
"McFarlane’s figures emerge in intricate detail, defined by their petty desires, their moral imperfections, and their relationship both to the cataclysm of colonization and to the grandiosity of the landscape and the sun, which, for some, takes on near-divine significance."
—The New Yorker
“Masterful storytelling . . . We read on with queasy dread when the spotlight falls on frightened and exhausted Denny wandering farther off-course . . . But we also read on captivated by the novel’s beautiful prose and polyphonic voices, and marveling at both its epic scope and rare intimacy.”
—Malcolm Forbes, The Washington Post
“A thrilling success . . . McFarlane spins a novel full of mystery and wonder.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“With this remarkable novel, McFarlane establishes her place in the firmament of Australian letters, reworking and expanding the imaginary of its early years.”
—Claire Messud, Harper’s Magazine
“A lyrical, polyphonic story . . . McFarlane peels back the layers of the whole community, showing us how all the many members respond—to the crisis, to each other, and to the mythic, desperate landscape in which they live.”
—Emily Temple, LitHub (most anticipated)
“The Sun Walks Down is a revelation. McFarlane places her lens first over the disappearance of a small boy in the Australian Outback and zooms out, weaving the stories of the people involved in the search for him into a tapestry as richly imagined and fully realized as anything I’ve read in recent memory. Her sentences fit together with the beauty of fine carpentry, and with them she’s constructed a novel that calls to my mind no less than Patrick White’s The Tree of Man. I can’t think of another writer working today who I admire more.”
—Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds
“This tale of a farming community’s search for a missing child offers intimate human drama, ruminations on the intersections of art and life, and a sweeping, still relevant view of race and class in Australia . . . A masterpiece of riveting storytelling.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The Sun Walks Down is a brilliant, intimate epic, a book about a family and also about history that is full of heart and heat. Fiona McFarlane's ear for the gurgles and clamor and hidden symphonies of her characters’ souls is flawless; the way their lives intertwine is propulsive, heartbreaking. She is, simply, one of the best writers around.”
—Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Souvenir Museum and Bowlaway
“Fiona McFarlane’s last book was scintillating. The Sun Walks Down is even better. It’s compelling: old-fashioned in all the best ways, historically sensitive, generous in storytelling and yet modern and sharp.”
—Sarah Moss, author of The Fell
“The Sun Walks Down by Fiona MacFarlane is, quite simply, the best novel I've ever read about 19th century Australia. A tense search for a lost child unfolds with rising dread against a landscape of harsh and radiant beauty, amid lives as tangled as barbed wire.”
—Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse
“Gorgeous storytelling and superb characters are among the glories of The Sun Walks Down. Fiona McFarlane is an extraordinary writer, one of the best working today. Her magnificent reworking of the lost child story showcases the profound understanding she brings to people, places and the past. I lived in this wise, majestic novel for days and never wanted it to end.”
—Michelle de Kretser, author of The Hamilton Case
Emma Jones narrates this realistic novel, which begins when a 6-year-old boy disappears in a dust storm in colonial Australia. After Denny Wallace goes missing, everyone from the boy's family to people from far-flung stations joins the search. Listeners learn as much about the searchers and their inner lives as they do about the missing child. Each person--including farmers, cameleers, policemen, Indigenous trackers, and more--is examined with precision and telling details. In a low-key tone, Jones attempts to convey the characters' similarities and differences, but her voice is too matter-of-fact to infuse them with life. McFarlane's novel builds a credible plot with authentic motives, but, sadly, Jones's narration misses the mark on the intensity, despair, and hope of its numerous characters. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Emma Jones narrates this realistic novel, which begins when a 6-year-old boy disappears in a dust storm in colonial Australia. After Denny Wallace goes missing, everyone from the boy's family to people from far-flung stations joins the search. Listeners learn as much about the searchers and their inner lives as they do about the missing child. Each person--including farmers, cameleers, policemen, Indigenous trackers, and more--is examined with precision and telling details. In a low-key tone, Jones attempts to convey the characters' similarities and differences, but her voice is too matter-of-fact to infuse them with life. McFarlane's novel builds a credible plot with authentic motives, but, sadly, Jones's narration misses the mark on the intensity, despair, and hope of its numerous characters. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
★ 2022-11-16
Set in arid Southern Australia in 1883, this tale of a farming community’s search for a missing child offers intimate human drama, ruminations on the intersections of art and life, and a sweeping, still relevant view of race and class in Australia—and by extension, the U.S.
Six-year-old Denny Wallace wanders off his family farm during a sudden dust storm in the novel’s gorgeously rendered, anxiety-provoking first pages. The next scene, describing a wedding Denny’s sisters happen to be attending in the nearby town, charms with sexy innuendo and mild comedy. The tonal switch, jarring but effective, prepares the reader for plotting and characterizations that repeatedly confound expectations. Organized into the seven days and nights of searching for Denny, the suspense story—will he be found in time?—is a strong foundation for the novel’s larger ambitions. The treacherous beauty of Australia’s landscape comes vividly to life as a metaphor for the multiple human dramas unfolding. Australian-born McFarlane excels at creating a broad perspective on 19th-century Australia. The cast is Dickensian in size, but there are no caricatures. With a line of description here, a snatch of dialogue there, every character develops a fertile interior life: Denny’s sisters and financially strapped parents; the lusty young bride and groom from the wedding; the uncomfortably privileged members of a wealthy ranching family; a visiting Swedish artist and his wife who disagree on art’s relationship to life. Indigenous people, taken for granted by the Whites, play particularly central roles, participating in the search with more skill than the White employers they observe with disdain. Even outsiders, like an Afghan trader passing through, are spotlighted in set-piece monologues. Although at times Denny’s would-be saviors, wrapped up in their private issues, almost forget about him, the boy remains the reader’s point of gravity as he navigates a frightening world with a child’s intuition.
A masterpiece of riveting storytelling.
