Honestly, Heather Rose is a brilliant writer. I loved The Museum of Modern Love so much. Bruny is an entirely different novel but it crackles with the same sharp intelligence and brims with empathy. I'm sad it's over, actually. ( )

Astrid Coleman's twin JC is the Liberal Premier of Tasmania, coming up to an election in less than 6 months. Their old sister is the leader of the Labor opposition. The focus of JC's activity has been a huge bridge to connect mainland Tasmania to the island of Bruny. But now someone has bombed the nearly completed bridge. JC asks Astrid to come home. He wants her to manage public relations while he gets the re-building of the bridge agreed to. Initially she refuses but then gets an instruction from her bosses to go.

People find it very difficult to understand why the bridge is being built. It has Federal Government backing, and then JC announces that he has secured a workforce of about 300 Chinese workers to be available for the re-build immediately, and Astrid wonders what the Chinese are getting out of the deal.

This is a thought provoking novel in many ways. Astrid's parents are suffering from dementia and final-stage cancer and this adds another dimension to the story.

Rose has some interesting comments on Australian attitudes.

Awards:

Shortlisted, Best Fiction, Indie Book Awards, 2020, AU
Longlisted, Best Designed Commercial Fiction Cover, Australian Book Design Awards, 2020, AU
Winner, General Fiction Book of the Year, ABIA Awards, 2020, AU
Shortlisted, Adult Fiction Book of the Year, ABA Booksellers' Choice Awards, 2020, AU
Shortlisted, Best Crime Fiction, Davitt Awards, 2020, AU
Longlisted, Nib Literary Award, 2020, AU ( )

This novel is a far cry from The Museum of Modern Love, and was something very different to what I expected. It's a political thriller where Ace Coleman is summoned home from her job as a UN conflict negotiator by her twin brother, the Tasmanian Premier. The bridge being built to Bruny Island has been bombed, and it is essential that the various interest groups be dealt with so that the build can be completed to the original schedule. Ace's brother asks her to do that job.

Complicating matters is that Ace's sister Max is the Opposition Leader. This aspect of the book is something I found a stretch myself; it strained credulity beyond my limits. Still, the plot was very good, with twists that I didn't see coming, and a clever nod towards Tasmania's history. ( )

BRUNY is a book which unfortunately (stupidly) sat in the reading piles here for, it turns out, way too long. Luckily our F2F bookclub was scheduled to read it last month, and I've never been so pleased that something was jolted out of stasis and into the current pile. It was, quite simply, fabulous reading. Even allowing for a bit of a technical hiccup at the end, everything else about BRUNY was absolutely perfect for this reader (and for the majority of the bookclub as well).

Set in Tasmania in a time period that could be anything between now, and any point in the future, this is a thriller that touches on politics, corruption, conspiracy, climate change, family tensions and connection, and the ever present threat of loss of autonomy and control (personal, place, and mindset). It does it all from the viewpoint of a family deeply embedded in local political and activist life. A grandfather unionist, a father politician, and now a son who is Liberal premier, a daughter who is the Leader of the Opposition, and a twin sister who is a professional negotiator, returning to the State she grew up in to assist her brother after a bomb attempts to destroy his big infrastructure program - a huge bridge between "mainland" Tasmania and the idyllic island of Bruny.

There's a lot going on in BRUNY and it's a bit of a genre buster. Part political commentary, part thriller, there's romance and family drama, delivered with dystopian elements, in a nicely laid back, verging on delightfully sarcastic style in places. The characters are brilliantly conceived and executed, and the tensions and family loyalties and interactions are utterly believable. There's humour, even laugh out loud moments, and there's a lot of cleverly developed threat and intrigue at the same time. It's fascinating how the tensions between the people of the island of Bruny and the main island perfectly mirror those between Tasmania and the mainland of Australia. BRUNY also addresses race relations and xenophobia, the exploitation of workers, feminism and the struggle that is coming to terms with ageing and terminal illness. If you're a reader that's normally decidedly leery of anything romantically inclined, here it's nicely low key, and somehow sort of felt right that novel that's mashing together so many genre elements, would include a bit of will they / won't they. In the same way if dystopian has you searching for the exits, there's nothing other-worldly about this version - making it even more chilling as a result.

What's most fascinating about BRUNY overall is the way that the timeline of the novel could be anywhere from now to any point in the future. Towards the end of the story, things get very complicated for everyone when Tasmania is hit by a cyclone, and I have to confess the idea of a cyclone that far down the globe didn't make me blink for a nanosecond (and then the week after that areas of WA never previously regarded as likely were hit by a cyclone and the third thought I had was, well BRUNY nailed that as well....).

At the heart of the whole thing though is the affect that politics and differing viewpoints have within the central Coleman family and the way that is reflected in the wider community. Development, exploitation, money above well-being, 'jobs and growth' in spite of environmental limitations, it's all here. The style is pitch-perfect though, never telling, showing the reader the eventualities, presenting scenarios that were real, believable and impossible to discount. At one point it started to feel less fictional thriller, more documentary.

As a side point, this was a novel that caused a rather unexpected event in our F2F bookclub gathering. Normally when we all love a book, the conversation turns to other things. This time it kept coming back to BRUNY, and everyone had something that resonated so strongly, so viscerally that they had to talk about it.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/bruny-heather-rose-0 ( )

Wow. A very timely read. Set in the very near future, the fate of unspoilt Bruny Island is in jeopardy as a bridge between Tasmania and Bruny Island is to be built. This contemporary novel has it all- Environmentalism, politics, overseas sales of Australian resources, China’s global expansion (and even a mention of the threat of a cruise ship and an epidemic!). If you want something to really make you think (and worry about) then try this. ( )