Angel Rock

by Darren Williams

Book Overview

From a young Australian writer whose first novel received the Australian/ Vogel Literary Award comes a new story about the disappearance of a four-year-old boy in the Australian Outback. Menacing and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375414517
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Knopf
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.1" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Simply, a masterpiece

Every few years we are privileged with book that tells a story so enchanting, that it brings emotions to the surface, water to the eyes, and an ache in your chest that you must look away for a moment to breathe and take it all in, for it is so beautiful and feels so real, in all the same moment. One of the first books I remember feeling this way about, The Odd Sea by Frederick Reiken released in 1998, I am still using as barometer for such feelings about a book. And now in 2002, I have found another, Angel Rock by Australian writer Darren Williams. The Aussies are on a roll this year!Twelve year old Tom Ferris, along with his younger four year old half brother Flynn, get lost while coming home from working with their logger father, a drunkard named Henry,who chooses to spend the evening drinking & womanizing in place of being a responsible parent and taking care of his boys. Tom wanders out of the woods, head bumped with a loss of his memory and an ache in his heart at the loss of Flynn. The Sheriff, Pop Mathers take in young Tom & his mother who cannot cope after the tragedy, setting up some of the best and most heartfelt dialogue in the book between this heartbroken wonderful young boy and the older wiser patient kind soul of the sheriff, a loving father himself. All this is also played against the back drop of another tragedy: the suicide of Pop Mather's daughter Grace's best friend Darcy Steele. The book, named after the town in which in all takes place, Angel Rock, attracts the investigator from far away Sidney who wants and actually needs to find out why a beautiful young woman took her own life. His is tortured himself by his own past, and Gibson also turns to Pop Mathers for understanding & truth. This is the story line, simple, but told with a description & prose so insightful & heartbreakingly eloquent. At times I felt overwhelmed by its beauty.Darren William's first book, the award winning Swimming In Silk published in 1995,is already very scarce and highly collectable and I believe it is only a matter of time before this one is too, and on such high merit.This book will stay with me for a long time to come, of that I am sure.

Muscular prose fuels powerful story

In his engrossing, suspenseful and beautifully written second novel (the first to be published in the US), Australian writer Darren Williams takes us into the hard, intimate, small-town life of the outback where money is scarce, old grudges lodge deep and secrets fester. Angel Rock is a place where the kids still go barefoot to school and the protagonist, 13-year-old Tom, can still barter chores for his after-school ice pop. As the book opens on a Friday afternoon in the first baking heat of summer, Tom, teetering on the brink between boy and man, revels in the growth of his maturing body, a fleeting joy quickly extinguished by his usual run-in with the town bully, Sonny Steele. His weekend anticipation is further dashed by his step-father, Henry's, demand that Tom help him finish a logging job. As his mother is also working, Tom's four-year-old half-brother, Flynn, also goes along. Henry works Tom hard, seemingly careless of his safety, an impression reinforced by talk of the other loggers." 'Henry's boy,' one said, as if Tom were hard of hearing.'Doesn't treat him good,' said a second.'Maybe it's not your business.''Maybe not, but he'll be six feet under, Henry doesn't watch out.' "The man goes on to observe the crux of the matter: " 'Yep, he's a good boy. Not his boy though.' " Flynn is Henry's boy and he dotes on him, as does Tom. But Henry likes to drink and at the end of the day he sends the boys off with a man in a hurry who drops them at an unfamiliar junction and points the way to town. The boys are soon lost. "The road wound down through a stand of gnarled of swamp gum where the darkness was thickening, great drifts of it piling up in the undergrowth. They could hear rustling, whispering sounds coming from behind the roadside trees."Tom keeps his rising panic from Flynn, but when his attention is caught by a kangaroo lying by the side of the road, Flynn disappears into the bush. "[Tom] looked up and around, as if he might be up a tree, or hanging in the air, glowing, like a small moon, but he was gone, and there were only so many times you could look in the same places."Meanwhile, Grace, nubile daughter of the sheriff, Pop Mathers, idles away her afternoon with her best friend Darcy Steele, the bully's sister. Darcy is wild and mercurial, full of life and trouble, but the afternoon ends with her in desperate tears, refusing to tell her friend why. The next day Grace, still hurt by Darcy's rejection, goes along with the search party her father has organized for the lost boys. Exhausted by the bush and skittish from the predatory leers of Darcy's father, she glimpses a strange, unkempt tramp (who had earlier begged food from Tom's house), but says nothing to Pop.Point of view shifts from the steady, sober sheriff and the search party to Tom, who finds Flynn, but not the way home. Both are growing weaker with hunger and fear, but Tom swears to Flynn he will get him home. Days pass and the search party is disbanded before Tom stumbles up to

Beautiful

This book is exceptional on every level, from its characterizations, to its narrative structure, to its plotting. The characters in particular are so finely wrought that each one, no matter how minor, is very real. Especially appealing are young Tom who is at the heart of this book: a kind and sensitive boy with a great depth of feeling, and Gibson, the detective from Sydney who has come to Angel Rock for reasons both known and unknown; a man of many sorrows who is none the less capable of gentleness and sympathy. These two characters connect in some way with everyone else in this wonderfully well-told tale of terrible loss and of life in a small Australian town. Nothing in Angel Rock, either the fictional town or the book, is predictable. Good people have bad moments; bad people have good moments. Everything meshes into a cohesive tale that is, in essence, about family dynamics and their long-term effects both good and bad on children. This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read; the last being Cold Mountain. There is no comparison between the two novels--merely a great gap in time.Darren Williams is a splendid writer, with great insight into human behavior and an understanding of how the smallest kindness to an adult or a child can have a lifetime's impact, and how a misplaced grudge can grow until it obliterates the landscape. Most highly recommended.

page turner extrordinair

A rivetting story laid out in poetic and concise prose. The dialogue easy to read, spare and inciteful.A wonderful story of fear; past secrets affecting the now.A mystery, a journey, a real page turner: I loved it.

CLEAR-CUT, MESMERIZING PROSE

From his opening words with which he introduces "still simple hearted" 13-year-old Tom Ferry to his shattering closing Australian author Darren Williams fills each page with clear-cut, mesmerizing prose. "Swimming In Silk," Mr. Williams's impressive first novel won for him the important Vogel Award. Now, American readers are able to see what the hoopla is about. A town in the desolate Australian outback, Angel Rock, is surrounded by dense undergrowth, unexplored wilderness. Thus, when two brothers, Tom, and his much younger brother, Flynn, are out alone it is not surprising that they become lost. What is astounding to Tom is the almost instantaneous disappearance of Flynn. He seems to have vanished in the blink of an eye. The small town is aroused by what has or what might have happened to Flynn. But, to compound their unease another child who lived in Angel Rock is found dead in Sydney. The teenaged girl is a supposed suicide. These two heart-stopping events bring to the surface much that has long been hidden in this little enclave: hatreds, obsessions. And, these events also bring Gibson, a Sydney detective given to booze and depression. "Angel Rock" pulls the reader along as secret after secret is revealed. The country is perfectly limned; the psychology astutely probed. Quite a read this!...