Things We Bury starts inauspiciously, with siblings reuniting in a small country town because their father, Stephen Harding, is seriously ill in hospital after a vehicle accident.
There’s Josh, a TV performer under the cloud of a sexual harassment scandal; Jac with a record of moving on when relationships become too close, but now planning to marry; and Dane, who is running the family business in his father’s absence, but with plans for his own career. It seems like a classic family story, with the siblings’ mother, Blaise, a former singer, who ostensibly left a successful career to be a wife and mother. Davies sets the scene gradually, with the siblings getting to know each other again, and reviving their memories of the small town of Pent, apparently not far from Wangaratta in Victoria’s High Country.
For Dane, who still lives there and knows most of the locals by name, that small-town atmosphere means those same locals also know about mistakes he has made.
Stephen, in an induced coma, is an enigmatic character who dominates the narrative. And then the plot of this novel changes. Suddenly, it is all about grief. Each of the characters feels it differently. Jac, in particular, wants to find someone to blame. The siblings’ partners also have to cope with that grief, second-hand.
A thread running through the story is Dane’s concern about the company and its projects, but that is one resolution that seems concrete by the end of the book. As for the other problems? As in real life, they are a work in progress.
Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville
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