This is a bleak novel about ex-con Lee, who has stolen a bag full of money and been shot in the process. He lands at a seedy hotel where disgraced doctor Wild is also staying, whom the motel owner browbeats into looking after Lee.

Wild and Lee leave and go on the run, each from his own demons. They find themselves in a downward spiral of increased desperation. Meanwhile, the implacable Josef is told to hunt Lee down and retrieve the money.

Womersley writes really well but the pace of this novel drags for most of it. It picks up a bit in the final act, which redeems it somewhat, but overall I found this a very dark story, maybe in the vein of Cormac McCarthy. ( )

Technically this isn’t really a review because I didn’t finish the book. In the portion that I read a disgraced junkie doctor (Wild) and a crook with an untreated bullet wound (Lee) are thrown together by circumstances at a seedy motel on the outskirts of town. They head off on the kind of road trip you’d take if you were unlucky enough to live in Hell, ostensibly to find a surgeon who can deal with Lee’s injury. Another crook (Josef) is angry with the Lee and he follows them. Things go downhill from there.

After I’d read the first 20-odd pages I put the book down and found dozens of ways to avoid picking it up again. I did that same thing three or four more times over the next couple of weeks. But, as I had voted for this book to be the subject of discussion at an online book club and because it’s by an Australian author, I felt obliged to give it another go. I got as far as page 74 before deciding I couldn’t spend my time in the company of these people anymore.

One of the things I love most about reading is that it often provokes strong reactions. I laugh, I cry, I join social justice campaigns, I pull bedclothes over my head in fear. Or, on occasions like this, I feel every crevice of my being becoming full of overwhelming despair. I vowed after finishing Luke Davies’ Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction that I wouldn’t read a book of unending bleakness again, feeling that despair fill me up like wet cement fills a foundation ditch, I assigned The Low Road to the DNF pile.

I can appreciate the writing. Womersley has a capacity for creating striking and long-lasting images with deceptively simple phrases that I am deeply envious of. It’s the subject matter sucked out my soul. I’ll demonstrate if I may. Josef has broken into Lee’s apartment and before leaving he pisses all over Luke’s bed (don’t ask). Womersley writes

He was unsure to do what to do when he had finally finished. He zipped himself up and waited while the rust -coloured puddle melted into the sheets and mattress. It didn’t give him nearly as much satisfaction as he had hoped, but perhaps he had expected too much.

That is exceptional imagery. But it makes me want to curl into the foetal position and weep.

Before I finish I’m going to have a whinge about the book’s eschewing of quotation marks to indicate dialogue. Is there a point? Is it supposed to be edgy? Modern? Was there a memo I missed? The book has commas, apostrophes and all the other punctuation you’d expect to see in English prose so I fail to see what purpose removing the humble quotation mark served but I found the failure to distinguish dialogue from everything else bloody annoying.

The most depressing novel I have ever read. However, also one of the most powerful. This book stayed with me long after I finished it. The characters unforgettable and that poor horse!!!!!! I curiously look forward to his next book, especially to see if a little light and joy may have infiltrated. ( )

Wild, a doctor de-registered because of his morphine addiction, cast out by his wife, and on the run from the law, checks into a dingy motel on the fringe of the city. He is rather obviously a doctor, carrying a medical bag with him, and so it is to him that Sylvia, the motel manager, turns when a young man with a gunshot wound is dumped on her doorstep.

The wounded man Lee is also on the run. He was shot during what should have been a simple money retrieval job, complicated by the fact that he has decided to keep the rather paltry sum of money for himself. Now Josef, the man who sent Lee to get the money, wants it back. Or rather his boss wants it back.

Wild was a GP and has never dealt with gunshot wounds and he decides to take Lee into the country to the house of doctor he knows. Their subsequent journey with Josef in pursuit is quest-like, with critical consequences for all concerned.

THE LOW ROAD was shortlisted for the 2006 Victorian Premier's Award for an unpublished manuscript. In 2008 it won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First novel. But to be quite honest, this book could be set almost anywhere, with very rare references to its Australian setting. Neither the setting nor the characters exude particularly Australian characteristics. My guess is that this will give the book a wider audience. There will be readers who won't recognise anything Australian about it.

Although there are elements of mystery in the strands of the story, and Lee and Wild's individual back-stories are cleverly unpacked as the main action progresses, for me THE LOW ROAD seems to have a lot in common with Westerns, while still being unmistakeably crime fiction. In style, particularly in the author's economy with words, it has a lot in common with Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD, which also works on the idea of a journey taking place in a harsh and unforgiving landscape, which I read a couple of years back.

THE LOW ROAD has one stylistic feature I feel I must comment on. Womersley has presented it without punctuation marks in dialogue. It is something that I have noticed recently in at least a couple of other novels. While contributing to the book's style, it has the effect of requiring the reader to focus closely on who is saying what.

Here is an example: A conversation between Josef and his boss Marcel.

Josef?
Yes Marcel.
We've got a problem.
Josef lowered himself into an overstuffed armchair that was here when he moved in. It was an enormous thing, almost capable of swallowing him whole. He stifled a sigh. What is it?
You heard from Lee? You seen him?
Josef sucked at his gold tooth. No.
Nothing?
No. Why?
Because. Neither have I.

As I read on through the novel, the lack of quotation marks, which struck me as odd at first, no longer seemed to matter. There were times when I had to re-read a passage to make sure I knew who had said what, but it does make me wonder if we are going to see more books written in this way, and whether this is an impact of word processed writing.

I thought I would make a comment on the cover design, which seems to me to be unusually good too. I've spent a long time looking at it. it appears to be a view of a harsh landscape, perhaps the road through shards of glass. It works really well with the fractured view of life the flawed characters in this novel have. Why "THE LOW ROAD"? Well, I'm going to let you puzzle over that one for yourselves. It reminded me of the words of Loch Lomond:

Oh ye'll tak' the high road
and I'll tak' the low road,

Chris Womersley was born in 1968 and that makes him a relatively young author. He currently lives in Sydney and has contributed stories and reviews to a variety of journals and newspapers. ( )

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/2755 ( )