HOLLY THROSBY Clarke. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Holly Throsby’s third novel takes inspiration from a notorious real-life missing persons case.
What would you do if you believed someone was a murderer? You don’t have proof, necessarily, but you have witnessed a series of events that seem to add up to an inevitable conclusion. And what if that person was someone you never liked to begin with? Would you trust your own judgement? Would you go to the police with your suspicions? And what if the police or the legal system interpreted what you told them in a very different way? These are all questions explored in Clarke, a mystery novel by Holly Throsby loosely based on the real-life case cold case of missing Sydney woman Lynette Dawson.
Clarke opens on an average day in the life of Leonie, who is caring for a small child she calls Little Joe. We learn that the house next door is rented by Barney and is currently being swarmed by squads of police wielding fancy equipment. Across the road lives Dorrie, who is watching the proceedings through her window. Though the women exchange glances, neither appears to express any surprise. Three chapters later we learn the police are looking for the body of someone named Ginny, who they think could be buried on the property.
This is a story delivered via drip feed, as we are dropped straight into the lives of the families on a particular street in a regional Australian town during the early 1990s. Woven through the scenes of uneventful daily life are snatches of information that the reader slowly pieces together. Leonie and Dorrie had been Ginny’s friends, and Ginny once lived in the house rented by Barney. Her husband, Lou Lawson, is now in Queensland with his second wife, Janice. Before Ginny mysteriously disappeared, Leonie had at times overheard:
… big horrible fights, and … Ginny would come to Leonie’s for cups of tea. She told [the police] how obvious it was that Lou Lawson was controlling, volatile, needy. ‘I heard him say some terrible things to her. From my yard and from my bedroom.’
When the novel opens Ginny has been missing for some years, despite having a small child her friends maintain she would never have contemplated leaving. But this is not a murder mystery, as such. There is no hard-boiled detective, no eccentric group of suspects. Rather, it is an examination of the lives of ordinary people who have found themselves at the centre of a tragedy. And that, for the most part, is what they are dealing with – the tragedy of the sudden and uncharacteristic disappearance of a woman who has left no trace of herself behind. Murder is one obvious explanation, especially given the unpopularity of her husband, but it is not the only one.
Unlikely as it may seem to her friends, or the tight-knit community, it is possible Ginny fled an unhappy marriage, joined a commune in the Northern Territory, chose to end her own life, or acted out any one of a number of other theories that have been floating around over the years. And since the police are so unforthcoming, theories are all that Leonie, Dorrie and other members of the community have to try and get some sort of closure.
‘So Clive thinks the woodchips were covering up some kind of “disturbance”, shall we say?’ said Wanda.
‘Yes, a disturbance,’ said Leonie. ‘But I don’t know … I do remember the grass was all pulled up before the concrete went in … And I always thought the lemon tree was too close to the fence. You know? Too close to my house. Like I would have heard something.’
‘But the storm,’ said Wanda.
‘I know, the well-timed storm.’
‘The convenient storm.’
‘Do you think he checked the weather report before he killed her?’
But despite what might have happened all that time ago, life right now rolls on. As the details of Leonie, Little Joe and Barney’s lives are slowly uncovered, along with what is left of Barney’s yard, we learn that Ginny is not the only resident who has suffered in a way she didn’t deserve. It may be, in fact, that the real calamity of Ginny’s disappearance – if indeed, her husband is guilty of murder – is that she didn’t flee, or join a commune, or do any of the increasingly unlikely things that have been proposed at different times. Such actions might have been considered odd, unjustifiable or bizarre, but they may well have saved her life.
And this may be the real tragedy, laid bare as we read this narrative. What events might we have prevented, had we acted differently or chosen to take the other fork in the road, a fork that at the time might have seemed illogical or strange?
The point is that we will never know. Fiction has the advantage of a tangible creator, a god-like figure who is able to provide an ultimate explanation of events, as Throsby chooses to do here. But, despite a trial and a conviction, it is unlikely that such a resolution will ever be granted to Lynette Dawson’s family. The justice system has determined that she was murdered and by whom, but it is possible any further clarity will forever remain hidden.
So where does that leave the residents of Clarke? Through the stories of Leonie and Barney in particular, Throsby builds a picture of a community that is healing even as the deepening destruction in Barney’s backyard stands as a reminder of the literal and metaphorical depths to which it is possible – through no fault of one’s own – to fall. Sometimes all we can do is pick which tine of the fork to travel, and just hope for the best.
Holly Throsby Clarke Allen and Unwin 2022 PB 416pp $32.99
Sally Nimon once graduated from university with an Honours degree majoring in English literature and has hung around higher education ever since. She is also an avid reader and keen devourer of stories, whatever the genre.
You can buy Clarke from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW or you can buy it from Booktopia.
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