Our Shadows is a multigenerational story centred around the mining community in Kalgoorlie. The story weaves around three sets of characters: Paddy Hannan who, in the 1890s, discovers gold there; Fred and Else Kelly in the 1930s whose livelihoods are tied to the mine; and their granddaughters Frances and Nell in the present, over whom Kalgoorlie casts a long shadow.

The majority of the novel focusses on Frances and Nell, but it was the sisters’ estrangement and rapproachment that I found the least compelling. Conversely, the chapters written from Fred Kelly’s point of view – dealing with the daily dangers of mining and his time in a Japanese POW camp – were the most memorable and moving. And although she is only a minor character, I loved the sisters’ aunt Enid, who is bitter, mean and thoroughly unlikeable. I’d have lapped up many more pages of her.

Jones’s writing is often lyrical. Time and again, she lands a sentence that demands to be read several times over, perfectly capturing the moment: ‘Her house was old … It had a closed aspect, an air of secrecy and the musty smell of things wrapped long ago in brown paper and hidden in leather suitcases.’ It was this deftness of language that kept me reading.

Our Shadows is a character-driven, gentle story. There isn’t anything surprising or dramatic about it, but it’s a pleasant read carried along by well-crafted characters. I enjoyed it while I was reading it but not long after finishing it, there were aspects of it already fading from my memory.

Reviewed by Louise Falconer