Review - The Silent Country by Di Morrissey

The Silent Country by Di Morrissey
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Paperback, 498 pages

Published January 1st 2009 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty, Limited 

Source: Own copy

 

Synopsis:

'The Silent Country is a vast and beautiful wilderness, a place which holds secrets and stories that are rarely spoken. TV producer, Veronica Anderson, travels to the Northern Territory to retrace the journey of an expedition that had set out fifty years earlier to film the outback, but which mysteriously ended in tragedy.

Of the group, led by the eccentric Maxim Topov, few are still alive and they are reluctant to talk about the intriguing events.

It is through the help of local NT Park Ranger, Jamie McIntosh, that Veronica begins to piece together the puzzle and discover the answers.

These answers break the silence and change her life.' 

My Thoughts:
The Silent Country is the first ever book I have read by Di Morrissey and I have to admit that it hasn't made me want to rush out and read more of her work.

I have just one word that pretty much sums up my entire experience with this book and that word is 'slow'.

In my opinion there were way too many slow winded explanations of certain events and the quality of writing was very basic, dry and totally unemotional.

As I was reading this book I felt like I was on the long and boring expedition along with them, but not in a good way.

I didn't warm to any of the characters and felt like they were all very forced, especially the character Maxim Topov. He just seemed to be too eccentric to the point where he wasn't at all believable and felt extremely fake to me.

The ending also contained a lot of flaws and left me asking many questions once I'd finished. This just led to me feeling completely annoyed after plodding along for what seemed like a lifetime to get this book finished.

The Silent Country does highlight a lot of issues on the treatment and life of Aborigines but the execution was very poor.

I've read that this definitely isn't one of Di Morrissey's best books but am not sure that I have the courage to try another one in the future.