Wild Dark Shore – Charlotte McConaghy

My friends at Penguin Books Australia sent me a copy of Charlotte McConaghy’s new novel, Wild Dark Shore, for review. I took a look at the blurb: “a novel about a family living alone on a remote island, when a mysterious woman washes up on shore”. And I’ve got to say, they had me at “washes up on shore”.

The family at the heart of Wild Dark Shore has been living on Shearwater Island for six years (a fictional location that McConaghy based closely on the real Macquarie Island, about 1,500km south of Australia’s southernmost point). Grief over the loss of his wife drove Dominic to take his three children to the most remote location he could find, but even that wasn’t far enough to escape their ghosts. The woman, Rowan, who washes up on shore has a connection to the island, one that she’s keeping from the family – and they have their secrets, too.

A warning: Wild Dark Shore is likely to provoke some climate anxiety in sensitive souls. Rowan’s pessimism is infectious, and the setting itself is the coal-face of climate change, with the sea level rising seemingly by the minute.

Even if the climate anxiety doesn’t get you, the traumas the characters are reckoning with will. McConaghy tries to take the sting out of it, it would seem, with a sexual attraction/doomed love story, but it seems too unlikely to be truly distracting. This book has A+ nature writing, and a fascinating premise, but it’s a huge bummer, overall.

Read Wild Dark Shore on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)