I Came to Say Goodbye in Aussie Readers

Dec 01, 2010 Bree T rated it it was amazing

Shelves: crime, library-reads, mystery

I Came To Say Goodbye caught my attention recently so I thought I’d request it in at my local library. It gave me a bit of an idea how popular it was when I was about 9th in the queue and had to wait close to three months in order to read it! I’m rarely ever in queue to read a novel at all, even new releases I manage to snag it first or there’s usually only 1 or 2 ahead!

It was worth the wait.

The novel is told predominantly from the point of view of Med Atley, a man in his late 50s. When we meet I Came To Say Goodbye caught my attention recently so I thought I’d request it in at my local library. It gave me a bit of an idea how popular it was when I was about 9th in the queue and had to wait close to three months in order to read it! I’m rarely ever in queue to read a novel at all, even new releases I manage to snag it first or there’s usually only 1 or 2 ahead!

It was worth the wait.

The novel is told predominantly from the point of view of Med Atley, a man in his late 50s. When we meet Med, he’s being told that he probably needs to get a lawyer because he’s going to need to give a statement. He doesn’t want to, but the police are going to come for him and them and the judge are all going to want to hear what Med has to say, as after all, he’s been there the whole time. So Med (not Ned, short for Meredith, and no, it’s not just a girls name, just ask him) gets a piece of paper and a pen and starts to write his statement to the judge, in his own words. He writes and writes, taking us back to the probable beginning – when he was just a young bloke with an eye on a pretty girl.

Med grew up in Forster (pronounced as Foster), on the mid north coast of New South Wales. He was born there, married there, bought his first house there, welcomed his three children there and never wanted to leave. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said of Med’s wife, who one day up and disappeared, never to be seen again, leaving him to raise their three children, Kat who was 12, Paul (called Blue) who was 11 and the youngest, Donna-Faye (commonly called Fat amongst the family) was 20 months.

Med did his best, sending the smart and dedicated Kat to a good boarding school to further her education. Blue stayed local for a while and then headed up to Lightning Ridge to try his hand at mining. That left Med and Fat at home together and when Fat was just 15 she was starting to come home later, sneak out. Med was the last to know that she was involved with a local orphan-gone-bad and after a few blow ups, Fat went out there to live with him. They never had any money, Fat always worked odd end jobs while her boyfriend, Paul Haines, did very little of anything. When Fat ends up pregnant after a while, Med tries to be happy because he loves Fat and he is a proud granddad. But one day, when little Seth is 14wks old, he gets a call to come to the hospital.

From there the novel really steps it up a gear. Seth is the victim of shaken baby syndrome and is taken into care. From there Fat spirals downward, institutionalized after having a breakdown and eventually relocated to a remote community to try and put her life back together in a government funded program and a big part of the book is the failure of the various programs and organisations at helping and/or rehabilitating Fat. Med visits her as often as he can, trying to be supportive, especially now that after years, Haines is finally out of the picture. He thinks Fat is doing well until the social workers tell him that not only is Fat pregnant, but the father is a Sudanese refugee who may or may not even be 18 yet. And even though it wasn’t proved who had shaken baby Seth, because Fat has had one baby taken off her and put into care, she won’t be able to keep this one.

Anyone, including Med, who thinks the worst is over and that Fat can begin to rebuild her life, hasn’t seen anything yet.

Every now and then you read a book where everything works for you. The storyline hooks you, the narrative voice is spot on, you feel a myriad of emotions and you can’t put it down. I Came To Say Goodbye was one of those books for me. I’ve always been a quick reader but I plowed through this one in about 3 hours.

I’ll start with Med. If you’re Australian then I think you’ll really appreciate him and his voice straight off the bat. Med is a bush Australian man, not overly educated, worked hard to bring home the money for his family, give his wife everything that she wanted and stepped in as mother and father when she took off. He has a way of speaking that to me, personifies a lot of genuine country Australian men, who are quite different to their city counterparts. He’s likable and so sympathetic. He doesn’t make excuses for himself or anyone else and he’s blunt and forthright about his own faults and where he thinks he may have gone wrong and where he thinks that things just happened that way. If you’re not Australian and you’re reading this book then Med might take some getting used to but I hope that you warm to him and that he grows on you. He’s a wonderful character to immerse yourself in.

The setting was both familiar and well painted. I loved that it was mostly set in Forster – I grew up not too far from Forster (about 90m maybe) and spent a week there at the completion of my high school years with my then-boyfriend, my best friend and her boyfriend (who also happened to be my boyfriend’s best mate). It remains, even now, 11 years later, one of the best week’s of my life and I’ve always wanted to go back but never really had the chance to. I even stayed at a place that Med mentions in the novel! I have to admit, I have a real soft spot for novels that are set in a well-known place, especially when that place evokes good memories. This one did more than that, it showcased the culture of the town as well.

Lastly, the storyline. Well I already mentioned how quickly I read this one, so I was obviously drawn right into what was happening and the story Med was telling. As a mother I was horrified at some of the events, moved to tears and scared out of my wits about this job of raising kids during this novel. I think it made me feel every possible fear and self-doubt for my child’s future as Med felt about his and I savoured every minute of it. It’s a well written novel that can really make you put yourself in a characters shoes and feel their pain and uncertainty as your own. ...more

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Dec 24, 2011 Gerda rated it liked it

This is perhaps one of the scariest books I've ever read. There are no ghost, zombies or anything horror which would normally scare the wits out of me, this is worse.
It's full of bureaucracy. It's full of inadequate care for people with mental illness in our society, with disastrous results. Most of all it's about not understanding meltal illness and the hardline approach by government "welfare agencies" to the detriment of everybody involved. And, as so often is the case, the children are the ...more

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Oct 21, 2020 Bookworm rated it liked it

Shelves: library, 2020-reads

Rating: B-

Something truly Australian was the tone of voice in this book. I really loved having the swapped perspectives, it gave us more information that we wouldn't have seen. I loved the characters' backstories and how Med put everything down. It was just so tragic to see how the family had to adapt to change they didn't want. What I really enjoyed was reading Med's perspective and how he came to learn so much about how systems in Australia work and how to raise a family as a single father.

Th ...more

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Oct 11, 2010 Jenny rated it really liked it

After reading an excerpt, I wasn't keen to read this, but the cover got me in. I'm glad I did read it as it turned out to be a rivetting story of one man's life, his family, and in particular, his youngest daughter's decline into madness. Told largely through Med's eyes in the form of a letter to a judge, one can't help but empathise with all this man has been through. Overington got the voice of her MC down pat. I found it a bit of a stretch though that someone would write such a lengthy letter ...more

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Oct 24, 2010 Jodie rated it liked it

It was OK in the manner that I kept turning the pages wanting to find out what happens and I liked the voice of Med which is such a quintessential australian male of that generation and location (much like my Dad). Unfortunately while I could kind of relate to some of the characters and their plight it still left me feeling as though it was quite one dimensional.

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Dec 13, 2010 Kat at Book Thingo rated it really liked it

Shelves: australian-authors, fiction-literary

Caroline Overington captures, in Med Atley, that quintessential voice of the Aussie battler, who tries to do the right thing by his daughter and can’t understand why the system keeps letting them down. I found the final twist to the story both tragic and uplifting. This one is Worth a look for the author’s insights into the Australian legal and welfare system, but keep the tissue box within reach.

Full review at Book thingo. ...more

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Mar 22, 2022 Kylie Daniels rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio

Tissues needed.

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Dec 13, 2012 Tess Thomson rated it really liked it

Shelves: contemporary, australian-fiction, humour

A great read, couldn't put it down. The characters vivid, the story utterly suspenseful. ...more

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Sep 19, 2014 Josie rated it really liked it

Oh this was very very close to being a tear jerker! Almost had me at the end there.
I loved this book. I have never read something of it's format before and I thought it was put together perfectly.
A real page turner. I look forward to more by this Author. ...more

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