Stephen Orr (b.1967) is a national treasure IMO. Over the course of his prolific career he has written novels, novellas, YA, short stories, non-fiction and plays which are quintessentially Australian and yet universal in their preoccupations. His latest title Shining Like the Sun is not just a novel about an old man in a declining Australian town, it's about depopulation of the countryside all over the world and a celebration of what matters about life in small towns: a sense of connection.

The title comes from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1966) by Thomas Merton, quoted in an epigraph at the beginning of Orr's novel.

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the centre of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness . . . This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . .

As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realise this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Stephen Orr shows that one way to tell them that is to write a novel that shows people 'shining like the sun.'

Wilf Healy is eighty, and he lives in the back room of a pub in a small town called Selwyn, where he has taken on all the jobs that aren't economically viable any more. He delivers prescriptions for the chemist and the mail for the post office; he does a shift at the failing pub and he drives the school bus with its half-dozen passengers, along with trying to sell the school's limp vegetable produce. None of these jobs are full time, and some of them aren't paid, not even petrol money for his ancient Morris. These jobs have nothing to offer young people in secondary school who are already planning their escape. Wilf would like to retire, but every time he raises the issue, it turns out to be all too hard for people who know that he will go on doing it indefinitely, because he cares.

What's left of Wilf's family after the death of his wife Nancy and his son Steven, consists of his niece Orla and her ne'er-do-well seventeen-year-old son Connor. There's a brother still alive, called Colin, but he took off for a brighter future decades ago and lives in the US. He did not come home for any of the funerals. So Wilf's responsibilities also consist of caring for Orla who has a 'blood disease' and trying to get Connor back on track after he prematurely left school to become a 'rock star' writing his own songs.

There must be hundreds of Wilfs all over Australia and rural areas elsewhere...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/04/02/shining-like-the-sun-2024-by-stephen-orr/ ( )