The Deepest Part of the Lake

Robert Hillman

It’s 1952, and in a small Victorian town a drama is about to unfold that will end in tragedy. Four boys begin a long swim across the lake to the island mountains. To David Shaw, the boy whose visions dominate the group, the islands are paradise. But it is in David’s imagination that the seeds of tragedy lie buried.

Around this central drama, Robert Hillman weaves the story of a community in which the Australia that is about to happen lives in embryo. For the huge lake itself is the work of a giant American construction company, and the town of The Weir is more than host to the hundreds of Americans who live there: it is the willing captive of the culture that the Yanks have brought with them.

A vivid cast of characters people this spellbinding new novel: the ageing communist, Shabby Saunders, whose humanity embraces both the weak and the strong; Jilly, the town beauty and feminist manqu, straining to see over the walls of her life; James and Oliver, giddy socialists heading off to university charged with a mission to remake the nation; Bernie Marr, the brutal war-hero and roistering drunkard; and Dulcie Finnegan, the indomitable matriarch of one of the town’s poorest families. Finally, there is the town itself, nestled in its green valley, seething with the life that the Yanks and immigrants from a dozen lands have brought to it.

This is a novel that throws a searching light on the best and the worst of the Australia that was. It shows, in the tragedy of one small boy, the little hells that dwell in paradise.