Dirt Town

No cover — Hayley Scrivenor: Dirt Town (2022, Macmillan Publishers Limited)

English language

Published Jan. 12, 2022 by Macmillan Publishers Limited.

ISBN:: 978-1-5290-8027-8

(1 review)

When twelve-year-old Esther disappears on the way home from school in a small town in rural Australia, the community is thrown into a maelstrom of suspicion and grief. As Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels arrives in town during the hottest spring in decades and begins her investigation, Esther’s tenacious best friend, Ronnie, is determined to find Esther and bring her home.

When schoolfriend Lewis tells Ronnie that he saw Esther with a strange man at the creek the afternoon she went missing, Ronnie feels she is one step closer to finding her. But why is Lewis refusing to speak to the police? And who else is lying about how much they know about what has happened to Esther?

Punctuated by a Greek chorus, which gives voice to the remaining children of the small, dying town, this novel explores the ties that bind, what we try and leave behind us, and what …

When twelve-year-old Esther disappears on the way home from school in a small town in rural Australia, the community is thrown into a maelstrom of suspicion and grief. As Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels arrives in town during the hottest spring in decades and begins her investigation, Esther’s tenacious best friend, Ronnie, is determined to find Esther and bring her home.

When schoolfriend Lewis tells Ronnie that he saw Esther with a strange man at the creek the afternoon she went missing, Ronnie feels she is one step closer to finding her. But why is Lewis refusing to speak to the police? And who else is lying about how much they know about what has happened to Esther?

Punctuated by a Greek chorus, which gives voice to the remaining children of the small, dying town, this novel explores the ties that bind, what we try and leave behind us, and what we can never outrun, while never losing sight of the question of what happened to Esther, and what her loss does to a whole town.

3 editions

Tak! reviewed Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor

4 stars

This is a novel so Australian that it goes from Milo to "no worries" to lamington in the course of a single paragraph.

Apart from that, it's kind of a typical crime novel following the investigation of a young teenage girl's disappearance.

The most interesting thing it does, in my opinion, is, among the chapters following various characters' viewpoints, adding "we" chapters that are meant to be kind of a combined viewpoint of the town's kids.

Subjects

English literature