A few weeks ago I finished reading the novel, A Rich Man’s House written by Andrew McGahan.

The story line mentions Tasmania and my home town of Hobart, and it mentions Antarctica – all of this sentimentally endeared me to it in the first few pages. But that is not enough to sustain me through a book. A strong, unusual story written in an accessible style is what I want to read.  McGahan delivered.  He creates a new part of the world in a plausible and realistic fashion; so well at the beginning that I felt confused enough to begin to believe it. Then as I read further, quite clearly his creation of an excessively high mountainous island south of Tasmania and north of Antarctica is a fiction. Overlaid on this location are a few characters which I either loathed or loved for their attitudes, values and behaviours.

Over the weeks since reading the novel, and in light of the fact that too many people around the world do not understand the strength of nature (until now), I have been considering this fiction to be an allegory of the way mankind has approached the use of the Earth. I doubt the author intended this point of view.

I recommend this as a terrific page turner of a book where you know things won’t work out well at the end but you can’t guess how. In the absence of open libraries to borrow and open bookshops to buy, I hope you can get a copy online and posted to you (if the postal service continues), or that an ebook is available to you.

Happy reading!