The Promise

This impressive new collection from the author of Blood (2011) introduces a host of peculiarly Australian outsiders: émigrés, kids, ex-cons and other lost souls, from vagabond ‘blackfellas’ to cuckolded husbands. Relayed in laconic vernacular prose, these are stories about people for whom actions speak louder than words. In ‘Snare’, a stammering youth thwarts a ‘pedo’s’ assault of an Islander girl, earning as a result the esteem of his bullies. ‘The Lovers’ sees a Carlton waiter admire a delicate beauty from afar, while ‘The Money Shot’ finds a trio of amateur crims saddled with an infant en route to a job. Elsewhere, a gang of boys meet their match in a high-pressure marbles tournament, while a jilted carpark attendant finds salvation in olives. Other stories detail the nuances of Indigenous experience: a young man makes a pilgrimage to the site of his birth, and the titular tale of a problem drinker of miscegenous parentage reads like an antipodean descendant of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. The latter is the standout, along with ‘The Ghost of Hank Williams’, which mingles a liquor-induced fugue with unearthly visitations from the country and western legend to offer a glimpse into the lives of a reforming drunk and his eccentric busker buddy. 

Gerard Elson is a writer and bookseller who works at Readings St Kilda