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The Sunken Road
Anna's life has the flavour of melodrama: a lover lost in Vietnam, a breakdown, a boring husband, an extramarital affair, a dead child, a lesbian daughter and gothic relatives at every turn. From the events in Anna's life this novel explores the workings of memory and the nature of time.
214 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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183 people want to read
About the author
Garry Disher
91 books687 followersGarry Disher was born in 1949 and grew up on his parents' farm in South Australia.
He gained post graduate degrees from Adelaide and Melbourne Universities. In 1978 he was awarded a creative writing fellowship to Stanford University, where he wrote his first short story collection. He travelled widely overseas, before returning to Australia, where he taught creative writing, finally becoming a full time writer in 1988. He has written more than 40 titles, including general and crime fiction, children's books, textbooks, and books about the craft of writing.
He gained post graduate degrees from Adelaide and Melbourne Universities. In 1978 he was awarded a creative writing fellowship to Stanford University, where he wrote his first short story collection. He travelled widely overseas, before returning to Australia, where he taught creative writing, finally becoming a full time writer in 1988. He has written more than 40 titles, including general and crime fiction, children's books, textbooks, and books about the craft of writing.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
August 16, 2022
I had been looking forward to reading Garry Disher for a while now due to glowing reviews and that he wrote about the Aussie bush. And this one had been nominated for a Booker back in 1996.
The book was about Anna and five generations of her family, from her grandparents to her grandchildren, mostly in remote Northern South Australia. The book was put together like Disher put post it notes all over a wall and someone else tried unsuccessfully to put them together into a story. Interesting snippets, but all over the place; dates, times, different characters, while all in four page chapters without dialogue nor paragraph breaks mostly. Up to the 20% I read anyway before throwing in the towel.
As I have a couple more of his books on my kindle, I'm hoping this is not his usual writing style. Cannot fathom it personally.
The book was about Anna and five generations of her family, from her grandparents to her grandchildren, mostly in remote Northern South Australia. The book was put together like Disher put post it notes all over a wall and someone else tried unsuccessfully to put them together into a story. Interesting snippets, but all over the place; dates, times, different characters, while all in four page chapters without dialogue nor paragraph breaks mostly. Up to the 20% I read anyway before throwing in the towel.
As I have a couple more of his books on my kindle, I'm hoping this is not his usual writing style. Cannot fathom it personally.
January 22, 2024
5★
“For most of its length the Bitter Wash Road, like any road, scribbled across the landscape in plain view, but for a short distance—linking Showalter Park and Isonville—it wound along the bottom of a gorge.”
For most of Anna’s life, she was in plain view, but there were parts that she kept deeply buried, ‘sunken’ out of sight.
This is a complex study of a woman, from her first years to her last, and the people she loved, loathed, and mourned. One of the tragedies of her life is introduced at the outset.
“Of Anna’s own children, Michael slept through the night and Rebecca struggled against her from the very start. Yet sweet, peaceful Michael it was who died, lost in a car wreck on the sunken road, and Rebecca developed the conviction that Anna might, through inattention, kill her, too.”
The car wreck on the so-called sunken road is referred to in several chapters, each with a different slant on the circumstances. Anna’s relationship with Rebecca comes in and out of the story well into Anna’s old age.
She develops a strange view of luck, deciding for some years that she is jinxed, bringing bad luck to everyone. For her, luck is a creature.
“He had a human shape. He was a colourless chill shadow moulded to her back. He poisoned everything. He leapt across lighted spaces and brought down her loved ones.”
Disher has told this in an unusual order. It’s not chronological and it’s not alternating timelines, as is popular in historical fiction. Instead, he has 60-something chapters, each titled according to an episode or event in her life. The first is Loss, which is where the car wreck quote above comes from. Later we have Dancing, Reunion, Beach, Drunk, Farmer, Illness, Secrets, Drought and so on.
The passages I have quoted, for example, may seem like spoilers, but they are all from very early chapters in the book.
As a child, Anna didn’t realise that “sunken road” was only its local nickname.
“But when she took the sunken road into the wider world, she met snideness and incomprehension. Fiercely she defended the name, and cried in frustration: They laughed at me. Her mother swung her on to her knee: Ignore them, sweetheart. It’s just a name Grandpa brought back from the war, after a trench he dug to fight the Germans.”
That was Grandfather Ison, of “Isonville”, the property (not a town) owned by her mother’s influential family. Grandfather Tolley, on the other hand, watched his young wife taken by a shark on South Australia’s Henley Beach when Anna’s father, Peter, was just a little fellow. He took Peter inland to Pandowie and never went near the beach again.
“They were Tolleys and the Tolleys were poor. They had come from nowhere with Grandfather Tolley and they had no money, not like the Isons, her mother’s family, who had been around forever and had money to burn.”
Anna is split - half privileged Ison and half poor Tolley - and properties are split. The chapter titled “Split” opens with this.
“Isonville used to be five times the size it is now, sweetheart. Anna knew the story. Grandfather Ison returned from the Western Front in 1919 to find his parents dead of influenza and the broad acres parcelled up among his many married sisters.”
The friction and history between the Isons and Tolleys and the prestigious neighbours, the Showalter family, forms much of the basis of Anna’s story. She is raised partly in the old Isonville homestead until they are shifted out, split off, so to speak, by another relative to live in an older, rougher building.
Anna enjoyed the attention of boys.
“She sprawled in his utility, lazy-lidded, lips swollen, a flush on her breasts that she loved and rued and was helpless to control, her spine accommodating the worn springs and cracked upholstery as if she were a dozy cat, feeling more alive than she could remember.”
Births and marriages and funerals crop up out of sequence in different chapters, meaning readers are left to eventually piece things together. (Incidentally, there are no quotation marks.)
I enjoyed the formatting. It’s a little like getting to know someone whom you meet as an adult and then gradually learn bits of their past over coffee, drinks, and when celebrating or commiserating over our own births, marriages, and funerals.
Anna feels drawn to the sea, to the beach that her father was forbidden to visit in his youth, because of the traumatic shark incident his own father never recovered from. There she finds cool, green respite from the dry, rocky farms she has remained on all her life, in spite of chances to leave.
“Anna will stick it out, and when Sam dies she will move south to the coast, where her sun-narrowed eyes in a nest of wrinkles will mark her out as a farmer’s widow.”
But even when she has made the move, her past pulls her back inland. Nostalgia is complicated.
“Whenever she returns to Pandowie to mark the changes, a voice, a gait, a peppercorn tree, a sun-warmed verandah post will take her back, pleasure and pain in complicated doses.”
I don’t know how Disher, as a middle-aged man, managed to make us so intimately familiar with an old lady.
This was nominated for the Booker Prize when it was first published in 1996, and I can certainly see why. It’s not a straight-forward narrative, like many of his well-known mysteries. It’s even better.
“For most of its length the Bitter Wash Road, like any road, scribbled across the landscape in plain view, but for a short distance—linking Showalter Park and Isonville—it wound along the bottom of a gorge.”
For most of Anna’s life, she was in plain view, but there were parts that she kept deeply buried, ‘sunken’ out of sight.
This is a complex study of a woman, from her first years to her last, and the people she loved, loathed, and mourned. One of the tragedies of her life is introduced at the outset.
“Of Anna’s own children, Michael slept through the night and Rebecca struggled against her from the very start. Yet sweet, peaceful Michael it was who died, lost in a car wreck on the sunken road, and Rebecca developed the conviction that Anna might, through inattention, kill her, too.”
The car wreck on the so-called sunken road is referred to in several chapters, each with a different slant on the circumstances. Anna’s relationship with Rebecca comes in and out of the story well into Anna’s old age.
She develops a strange view of luck, deciding for some years that she is jinxed, bringing bad luck to everyone. For her, luck is a creature.
“He had a human shape. He was a colourless chill shadow moulded to her back. He poisoned everything. He leapt across lighted spaces and brought down her loved ones.”
Disher has told this in an unusual order. It’s not chronological and it’s not alternating timelines, as is popular in historical fiction. Instead, he has 60-something chapters, each titled according to an episode or event in her life. The first is Loss, which is where the car wreck quote above comes from. Later we have Dancing, Reunion, Beach, Drunk, Farmer, Illness, Secrets, Drought and so on.
The passages I have quoted, for example, may seem like spoilers, but they are all from very early chapters in the book.
As a child, Anna didn’t realise that “sunken road” was only its local nickname.
“But when she took the sunken road into the wider world, she met snideness and incomprehension. Fiercely she defended the name, and cried in frustration: They laughed at me. Her mother swung her on to her knee: Ignore them, sweetheart. It’s just a name Grandpa brought back from the war, after a trench he dug to fight the Germans.”
That was Grandfather Ison, of “Isonville”, the property (not a town) owned by her mother’s influential family. Grandfather Tolley, on the other hand, watched his young wife taken by a shark on South Australia’s Henley Beach when Anna’s father, Peter, was just a little fellow. He took Peter inland to Pandowie and never went near the beach again.
“They were Tolleys and the Tolleys were poor. They had come from nowhere with Grandfather Tolley and they had no money, not like the Isons, her mother’s family, who had been around forever and had money to burn.”
Anna is split - half privileged Ison and half poor Tolley - and properties are split. The chapter titled “Split” opens with this.
“Isonville used to be five times the size it is now, sweetheart. Anna knew the story. Grandfather Ison returned from the Western Front in 1919 to find his parents dead of influenza and the broad acres parcelled up among his many married sisters.”
The friction and history between the Isons and Tolleys and the prestigious neighbours, the Showalter family, forms much of the basis of Anna’s story. She is raised partly in the old Isonville homestead until they are shifted out, split off, so to speak, by another relative to live in an older, rougher building.
Anna enjoyed the attention of boys.
“She sprawled in his utility, lazy-lidded, lips swollen, a flush on her breasts that she loved and rued and was helpless to control, her spine accommodating the worn springs and cracked upholstery as if she were a dozy cat, feeling more alive than she could remember.”
Births and marriages and funerals crop up out of sequence in different chapters, meaning readers are left to eventually piece things together. (Incidentally, there are no quotation marks.)
I enjoyed the formatting. It’s a little like getting to know someone whom you meet as an adult and then gradually learn bits of their past over coffee, drinks, and when celebrating or commiserating over our own births, marriages, and funerals.
Anna feels drawn to the sea, to the beach that her father was forbidden to visit in his youth, because of the traumatic shark incident his own father never recovered from. There she finds cool, green respite from the dry, rocky farms she has remained on all her life, in spite of chances to leave.
“Anna will stick it out, and when Sam dies she will move south to the coast, where her sun-narrowed eyes in a nest of wrinkles will mark her out as a farmer’s widow.”
But even when she has made the move, her past pulls her back inland. Nostalgia is complicated.
“Whenever she returns to Pandowie to mark the changes, a voice, a gait, a peppercorn tree, a sun-warmed verandah post will take her back, pleasure and pain in complicated doses.”
I don’t know how Disher, as a middle-aged man, managed to make us so intimately familiar with an old lady.
This was nominated for the Booker Prize when it was first published in 1996, and I can certainly see why. It’s not a straight-forward narrative, like many of his well-known mysteries. It’s even better.
July 24, 2022
Many thanks to Patty, who opened my eyes to author Gary Disher,
….an Australian author who has written over forty books, novels, short story collections, history textbooks, children’s fiction, police procedurals, and crime thrillers.
“The Sunken Road” is my first book by him.
Nominated on its original 1996 release for the Man Booker Prize, “The Sunken Road” is set in the wheat and wool country of mid north south Australia…..
it tells the story of a region, a town, and one of the most memorable characters in Australian fiction.
“At the height of the Great Depression, with farmers walking off the land and the city’s creeks lined with kerosene shanties, a young mother is taken by a shark in the shadows at Henley Beach. Her grieving husband flees north with his baby son to the town of Pandowie, far from the treacherous ocean.
In time, the boy will have a daughter: the wilful auburn-haired Anna Tolley”.
Protagonist Anna Tolley affects everyone around her —the town people seem to either love her, want to be like her, or are jealous or resentful.
A few want to protect her.
She’s an interesting character: leggy, calculated, scarred by tragedy (sunken), with stunning auburn-hair.
She is young women who pushes boundaries —her outer shell has a defensive quality. As readers — we understand this.
This is a quiet book….non-lineal styling.
I found the short changing sections somewhat challenging—but I did enjoy the multigenerational family saga stories with the townspeople and town itself.
I found myself wishing I could just go to Australia, myself already —visit the gorgeous country and meet the friends I’ve connected with from Goodreadsl…..
I’d love to get a deeper experience of the region, setting, history, the culture.
I have a little ‘thing’ for books that at set in Australia…
But… I admit this book was beautifully ‘average’ for me.
I blame myself for not liking it more —
— I had to concentrate harder than I had expected to have to do — when truthfully I was wanting an easier flowing - ‘mindless’ book.
Blame me -not the book —
Yet — I’d like to try other books by Disher.
PattyMacDotComma — wrote an outstanding 5 star review!
3.5 rating ....I rated up for much appreciation --and a desire to read the author again!
….an Australian author who has written over forty books, novels, short story collections, history textbooks, children’s fiction, police procedurals, and crime thrillers.
“The Sunken Road” is my first book by him.
Nominated on its original 1996 release for the Man Booker Prize, “The Sunken Road” is set in the wheat and wool country of mid north south Australia…..
it tells the story of a region, a town, and one of the most memorable characters in Australian fiction.
“At the height of the Great Depression, with farmers walking off the land and the city’s creeks lined with kerosene shanties, a young mother is taken by a shark in the shadows at Henley Beach. Her grieving husband flees north with his baby son to the town of Pandowie, far from the treacherous ocean.
In time, the boy will have a daughter: the wilful auburn-haired Anna Tolley”.
Protagonist Anna Tolley affects everyone around her —the town people seem to either love her, want to be like her, or are jealous or resentful.
A few want to protect her.
She’s an interesting character: leggy, calculated, scarred by tragedy (sunken), with stunning auburn-hair.
She is young women who pushes boundaries —her outer shell has a defensive quality. As readers — we understand this.
This is a quiet book….non-lineal styling.
I found the short changing sections somewhat challenging—but I did enjoy the multigenerational family saga stories with the townspeople and town itself.
I found myself wishing I could just go to Australia, myself already —visit the gorgeous country and meet the friends I’ve connected with from Goodreadsl…..
I’d love to get a deeper experience of the region, setting, history, the culture.
I have a little ‘thing’ for books that at set in Australia…
But… I admit this book was beautifully ‘average’ for me.
I blame myself for not liking it more —
— I had to concentrate harder than I had expected to have to do — when truthfully I was wanting an easier flowing - ‘mindless’ book.
Blame me -not the book —
Yet — I’d like to try other books by Disher.
PattyMacDotComma — wrote an outstanding 5 star review!
3.5 rating ....I rated up for much appreciation --and a desire to read the author again!
April 6, 2020
It was the days of the Great Depression when a young mother was taken by a shark on Henley Beach in Adelaide, and her husband and young son fled the city for the country, settling in the small town of Pandowie, a long way from any beaches. His devastation was great. Over time the young son married and had a daughter – Anna Tolley. This story is about the wild and rebellious Anna and her long life.
I found The Sunken Road a little difficult to follow because the events don’t happen in chronological order. Its back and forth nature meant full concentration was needed to retain the facts. But it is beautifully written, is poignant and powerful, and Anna is a fabulous character. I loved mention of Bitter Wash Road (from the book of the same name) and even though it was a challenge, it was well worth it in the end. A great book, written and originally published in 1996, this edition is republished by Text Publishing in 2020, and shows how Aussie author Garry Disher can put his hand to anything. A beautiful read which I recommend.
With thanks to Text Publishing for my ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.
I found The Sunken Road a little difficult to follow because the events don’t happen in chronological order. Its back and forth nature meant full concentration was needed to retain the facts. But it is beautifully written, is poignant and powerful, and Anna is a fabulous character. I loved mention of Bitter Wash Road (from the book of the same name) and even though it was a challenge, it was well worth it in the end. A great book, written and originally published in 1996, this edition is republished by Text Publishing in 2020, and shows how Aussie author Garry Disher can put his hand to anything. A beautiful read which I recommend.
With thanks to Text Publishing for my ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.
August 23, 2020
In this book, set in my part of Australia, Disher draws on his own experience as well as historical research because it’s the region where he grew up on a farm, sheep and wheat country with marked social divides between wealthy pastoralists on large properties, struggling farmers scraping a living on much smaller pieces of land and townspeople. And a clever girl who pushes boundaries. How does she fit in?
It was shortlisted for the Booker, but its sequencing and the shifting time frames made no sense to me; they required more of me than I was willing to give.
It was shortlisted for the Booker, but its sequencing and the shifting time frames made no sense to me; they required more of me than I was willing to give.
Read
January 8, 2021The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing – publisher of The Sunken Road
‘Astoundingly original’
The Mail on Sunday
‘A modern classic’
Options
‘One of the most original, vibrant, compelling Australian novels’
Sydney Morning Herald
‘One of the original and best Australian rural noirs.’
Australian
‘Astoundingly original’
The Mail on Sunday
‘A modern classic’
Options
‘One of the most original, vibrant, compelling Australian novels’
Sydney Morning Herald
‘One of the original and best Australian rural noirs.’
Australian
Read
July 22, 2015Not even going to read it. It's one big slab of narrative, no dialogue in sight. What's the point of writing a story featuring humans if those humans lack a voice of their own?
January 19, 2021
Well, here was a change of writing style. One that you don't often see. Just as an Impressionist painting is built up of individual strokes of colour to form a cohesive image on completion, so to was this story. Small topics concerning various characters, places and times are built to present a family, past and present, essentially revolving around the character of Anna. For me, it took me a while to get into this form of writing but I did enjoy the book.
August 3, 2025
Rambling storyline of little interest.
September 26, 2020
What a disappointment. I was not enjoying this book but some reviews convinced me to keep going as everything would come together at the end. It didn’t! I was expecting a big reveal. There wasn’t! Everything was telegraphed well in advance.
The book is written around themes, each chapter of 3-4 pages being a new theme, as Anna remembers her life in the north west of South Australia. However there were no paragraphs and so time frames kept suddenly changing.
The book is written around themes, each chapter of 3-4 pages being a new theme, as Anna remembers her life in the north west of South Australia. However there were no paragraphs and so time frames kept suddenly changing.
September 27, 2022
The blurb on the back of my copy says that The sunken road is “Gary Disher’s proudest achievement”. That’s understandable - it’s very well written and the harshness of rural life over several decades is depicted exceptionally well.
However, it doesn’t really feel like a novel, more like a biography. The structure is interesting and understandably satisfying to the author but it didn’t really work for me. Each chapter is around 4 pages and generally deals with one aspect of the life of the protagonist, Anna - eg Fire, Obsession, Loss, Home - and covers that aspect, often hastily, through her childhood, young adulthood, marriage and parenting and old age (in 4 pages!). The lack of paragraphing makes the rapid transition from stage to stage of Anna’s life difficult at times, although it works well on occasion.
I enjoyed much of this book and it was the quality of the writing that made me stick with it. The unusual narrative structure was a challenge and I felt at the end of the book that I didn’t know Anna any better than I had after the first few chapters.
However, it doesn’t really feel like a novel, more like a biography. The structure is interesting and understandably satisfying to the author but it didn’t really work for me. Each chapter is around 4 pages and generally deals with one aspect of the life of the protagonist, Anna - eg Fire, Obsession, Loss, Home - and covers that aspect, often hastily, through her childhood, young adulthood, marriage and parenting and old age (in 4 pages!). The lack of paragraphing makes the rapid transition from stage to stage of Anna’s life difficult at times, although it works well on occasion.
I enjoyed much of this book and it was the quality of the writing that made me stick with it. The unusual narrative structure was a challenge and I felt at the end of the book that I didn’t know Anna any better than I had after the first few chapters.
December 30, 2021
I have enjoyed many of Garry Disher's more recent novels, especially the Paul Hirschhausen series, so going right back to one of his earliest books was quite an experience. The writing style of this one was very different - straight narrative, wildly episodic and all over the place chronologically.
It's the story of a rural family from the mid-north of South Australia, through the trials and tribulations starting with the great depression. I think if I was not familiar with many of the settings and social references in the book, I might have struggled with it. It was not an easy book to read and needed lot of concentration to follow the changing chronology (often mid-sentence). I found that each episode formed a kind of tapestry that eventually came together for me (but I had to do a lot of work to get there).
I'm glad to have read it though for having reinforced the versality and evolution of the author.
It's the story of a rural family from the mid-north of South Australia, through the trials and tribulations starting with the great depression. I think if I was not familiar with many of the settings and social references in the book, I might have struggled with it. It was not an easy book to read and needed lot of concentration to follow the changing chronology (often mid-sentence). I found that each episode formed a kind of tapestry that eventually came together for me (but I had to do a lot of work to get there).
I'm glad to have read it though for having reinforced the versality and evolution of the author.
October 19, 2021
Very well written as usual and structured in a way that meant I couldn't put it down. Ongoing problem however with the fact that this was written by an Australian with a solid background in Australian history using history as a foundation who chose to exclude a first nation presence except at the usual level of a brief backward glance when required by the plot. A few generic references and one awful one that is more about a character who owned dreadful artifacts than the hidden history that went with them. If the author did not have the background he has I would have considered it as what we all so often do given the blurred history we were all fed, but he does not have that barrier. We are supposed to care about the characters he presents but the omission of that part of their lives is difficult once your eyes are open to our history.
September 5, 2025
I persevered with this because I love Garry Disher as an author, but this was hard work, requiring a lot more concentration than usual. Think of someone writing a multigenerational rural saga in chronological order, then cutting the whole text up into individual sentences, then randomly rearranging the sentences into long paragraphs across short themed chapters. It was a very unusual style. It is also a departure from the "we know something bad has happened but we are spending the whole book teasing about it" style. Here we know in the beginning what has happened in Anna's life, but the details gradually emerge, are repeated and (sort-of) build up to create a picture of a woman's long life in rural South Australia. But I'm not sure I really know and understand who Anna is, even by the end. The author's familiarity with this area comes through clearly.
March 29, 2025
Described life in a South Australian farming town really well. The story centres around a woman called Anna and gradually introduces her relatives (covering several generations). I drew up a family tree to keep track of them. The timeline is not linear - it constantly goes back and forth but it’s not confusing. This allows you to build up layers of each character’s history (eg you see Anna as a questioning child, a promiscuous teen, a frustrated wife, a never-good-enough daughter in-law etc). I liked the format of short (2-3 pages) chapters, each covering a different theme (eg Drought, Films, Siblings etc).
Well written. I enjoyed it but I see that others reviews were critical - possibly because they didn’t have the patience to go with the back and forth?
Well written. I enjoyed it but I see that others reviews were critical - possibly because they didn’t have the patience to go with the back and forth?
August 10, 2020
I found this non-lineal writing style very irritating to begin with. However, after a while I began to understand what the writer was trying to achieve and slowly became involved in the story more completely. It was like tracing someone's history through a personal journey but also revealing a web of interchangeable characters mostly descendants, whilst including a larger world of people and happenings outside of the self and was very relatable. In the end it was compelling reading and I totally respected this author's work. Highly recommended.
September 23, 2020
For a re-issue from 1997, this is pretty cutting edge. Same geography as Bitter Wash Road - that is the Sunken Road of the title - but such a different angle. This is a literary multi-generational family saga, set in a South Australian rural community, and written in an experimental structure. Composed in many short sections, to say the narrative is not chronological would be to under rate Disher’s craft. Although crime is a part of this novel, it is not everything. Best to discover the rest one’s self.
January 19, 2021
This is a book which is beautifully written as it explores using thematic chapters, the relationships between the characters as well as their individual feelings and emotions as affected by the themes. It also triggers memories and emotions for the the reader particularly as Anna, the main character's life unfolds. The setting and landscape also impact on the people and possibly on the reader, if it resonates with them. Definitely needs to be savoured and re read.
January 25, 2021
3.5 stars
This is very different from the other Disher books I've read.
I enjoyed it, once I'd worked out who was who - I had to create a family tree to keep them all straight. It was an interesting way to write the novel, a different topic for each chapter and then starting from the beginning again each time to relate to that topic. I quite liked it.
This is very different from the other Disher books I've read.
I enjoyed it, once I'd worked out who was who - I had to create a family tree to keep them all straight. It was an interesting way to write the novel, a different topic for each chapter and then starting from the beginning again each time to relate to that topic. I quite liked it.
March 6, 2022
2.5*
There were some interesting moments but I had to work to0 hard for them in this challenging format. I think it would work best to read only a chapter or two at a time. Trying to track what time frame we were in & who Anna was talking about detracted from my enjoyment. Very clever, no doubt, but too distracting.
There were some interesting moments but I had to work to0 hard for them in this challenging format. I think it would work best to read only a chapter or two at a time. Trying to track what time frame we were in & who Anna was talking about detracted from my enjoyment. Very clever, no doubt, but too distracting.
April 1, 2023
When I started this book I was hoping for something like the author’s Hirschhausen series. This book is nothing like that - it is a rambling collection of thoughts about Anna and her life in a small town. Within each chapter which has a theme like water or death, we are taken on a journey through Anna’s life referencing her grandparents, parents, Anna and then Anna’s daughter Rebecca.
April 23, 2024
Completely different to his detective fiction, The Sunken Road beautifully captures the bleakness of life in rural South Australia. Each chapter presents Anna's story using a thematic reflection on her life and family. It is repetitive but as each chapter unfurls we learn more details about the events that shaped her. Highly original writing worthy of Booker Prize Short-list.
August 13, 2025
This is a simple but beautiful book about a young spirited woman, Anna, and her life in rural Australia. I have read and enjoyed many of Disher’s crime novels. This novel deservedly made the short list for a Booker prize. It has a Proustian feel to it, past and present mingle, lives are loved and lost and it has a compassionate warmth which is very profound. Highly recommended.
March 31, 2021
Brilliant. I loved the free flowing style of writing - each short chapter covering a topic that could be anyone in any time zone. Yes, you need to concentrate while reading this, but it really builds the story of Anna beautifully. It has a surprisingly strong story line, presented in a contemplative manner. Wonderful book.
June 6, 2021
What a great read. So origional. I think it was written as an omniscient style with one central character. Chapter headings vital as the book constantly moves forward and back in time but covers the topic of the section heading. Challenging but very interesting.
August 1, 2023
I've enjoyed Garry disher books in the past and so many people rave about him.
However I couldn't get into this story. Each chapter a different time but still not very interesting, to me.
I'm open to trying another book
However I couldn't get into this story. Each chapter a different time but still not very interesting, to me.
I'm open to trying another book
May 30, 2024
This one felt a bit disjointed and confusing to me as the memories jumped backwards and forwards between the different ages and stages of Anna's life - still clever and beautifully descriptive, though.
September 22, 2020
Books written in the third person aren’t for me. Throughout this thoughtful, beautifully written tale I felt completely detached. And for me at least that took away much of the enjoyment I derived from this book.
Like all books I’ve read from this author you couldn’t help but like the book. I just wished I felt more a part of it.
So not for me, but still worthy.
Like all books I’ve read from this author you couldn’t help but like the book. I just wished I felt more a part of it.
So not for me, but still worthy.
February 21, 2021
Unusual format and occasionally I became a bit confused but insightful observations of rural life and characters.
Read
September 3, 2021DNF
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