There’s a trend – and long may it continue – where the shortest books hold the deepest philosophical explorations. And so it is with this beautiful, magical, insightful short novel in three acts and multiple timeframes.

Superficially, this is a story of people whose responsibility is to a girl who died young and is touted as a saint because her body refuses to decompose. The lives of these accidental custodians seem inconsequential, referencing the ‘little world’ in the title, however the beauty and depth of the narrative comes from the exploration of each character’s interiority: this ‘little world’ is contained within each cranium, and that world knows no bounds.

In the Kimberley in the 1950s, a nameless girl-saint’s uncorrupted corpse is bequeathed to Orrin Bird after the death of a friend. The girl and her coffin arrive in a horse float. Orrin has no idea what to do with her. The girl has a semblance of consciousness to which the reader has access. In the second act, Matti is travelling with Suze and Alex to Ningaloo Reef to see the whale sharks. These girls are from monied families; the corpse’s history is of a teenage pregnancy and forced adoption. They stumble on Orrin’s deserted shack and Matti decamps with the van, the coffin and horse float. Finally, in the COVID era, an elderly lady, Tilde, is being looked on by a lonely woman and her dog, who loves the lush grass over a buried horse float.

These plot markers in Little World are merely the stepping-off points for Rowe to unfurl each character’s thought processes. The language’s mellifluous rhythm highlights its unique imagery, and the resulting narrative is nothing short of stunning.

Reviewed by Bob Moore

Read a review of Here Until August by Josephine Rowe

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