The Silent Kookaburra is not an easy read. Extremely well written, it demands to be read with the same concentration as went into writing it. And it repays the effort. What this book does is to trace the evolution of Australia from place of safety to one that knows that the safety was always an illusion. It presents the story first from the point of view of eleven-year-old Tanya; the tragedy is already there, implicit in the knowledge that the adult reader can see what the child cannot and the adult reader knows what is going to happen to the girl. At the end, Tanya is herself an adult who not only understands now what she did not understand as a child but also presents us with a shocking ending that we feared but hoped would not happen. Perrat does not shrink from showing us the worst of human nature, though she leavens the mix with humour, and leaves us always uncertain whether we are seeing simple vileness or the results of mental illness. It is, as I say, not an easy read – but a very worthwhile one.

Return to Reviews of Other Writers’ Books