Fiona McFarlane’s intimate and unnerving debut, 2014’s The Night Guest, described a woman’s mental disorientation as she reaches the end of her life. It was shortlisted for the Guardian first book award and won several prizes in the author’s native Australia. Her second equally distinctive novel also deals with our precarious place in the world, taking its title from the Swedish expression for the setting of the sun.
There are seven sunsets in the story, which unfolds during a September week in 1883 in the South Australian outback surrounding the Flinders Ranges. They are a violent, “apocalyptic red” and coincide with a dust storm that sweeps through the small town of Fairly and its neighbouring farms. Once the storm has passed, six-year-old Denny Wallace is missing from his parents’ smallholding. Has he strayed into the bush or been snatched by someone? Word of Denny’s disappearance spreads from house to house and, as it does so, McFarlane carries us off on a whirlwind tour of this fictional colonial outpost.
