Ash Rain By Corrie Hosking, Kent Town: Wakefield Press, 2004, 214 pages, paperback, $19.95. Reviewed by Debra Zott in the April 2004 issue. Help more readers find out about this article
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Corrie Hosking's Ash Rain is a superb first novel, set in the Adelaide Hills, on the Eyre Peninsula, and in Edinburgh, Scotland. Each location has its particular feel -- its distinct atmosphere -- beautifully rendered in sensual but economical prose.
Dell is a landscaper who moves through the three landscapes in which her story is set. Her own place is the Adelaide Hills where she grew up, and where she continues to live in the shadow of the Black Monday Bushfire -- a traumatic memory from her childhood. Hers is a landscape that haunts her dreams with 'scarred earth...exploded rock...[a] protuberance of chalky bone', spirals of smoke, a white sky, and ash rain. (p. 1)
The Eyre Peninsula is friend Evvie's home territory. The atmosphere here is evoked by dust and open spaces, ocean spray, cockle shells and richly descriptive passages such as this, which illustrates her memorable prose style and skilful building of images: She takes a close look at granite, at the fusing of rose,
rust and flecks of cream crystal, at the weaving of thick
quartz ribbons and at the white paste of salt collected in
holes and pockets. (p. 93) Edinburgh is the home of Dell's new lover, Pat. It is all grey light, wet roads, pale sun, bird shit on slate roofs and cramped spaces -- a clear opposition to the vast spaces of Evvie's terrain. Here, Dell experiences the claustrophobia of a life lived mainly indoors.
The narrative compels, urging the reader along on a journey that explores memory, personal history and identity; that considers how we construct identities for ourselves, and acknowledges the shaping influence of place. Other themes explored in Ash Rain include the complexities of friendship, the mother/child relationship, what makes a family, and what creates a sense of home.
In the beginning there are Dell and Evvie whose relationship is ambiguous. Both apparently in their early twenties, they meet one evening in the city and there is a sense of uncertainty as to whether they are lovers or just friends. The reader can never be sure, but their relationship appears at times like a marriage, and at other times like co-dependency. Later, Luce and Pat enter their lives and bring with them inevitable changes.
The opening scenes portray the friends, along with Evvie's five-year-old daughter, spending a winter morning together in cosy slow-paced domesticity, telling stories in front of the television and open fire. Here, the novel has a particularly feminine feel about it. Always present is an undercurrent of sadness and mystery woven through tellings of Dell's past, and Evvie, too, has her secrets.
Identity and becoming are recurrent themes. As Dell follows Pat to Edinburgh, she 'wonders who she will be in the new place' (p. 121), while Evvie is struggling to remake herself after the birth of her daughter, and to return to her dancing career.
These themes are echoed in the symbolism of renovation -- both Dell's house in the Adelaide Hills and Pat's home in Edinburgh are in the midst of renovations. There is a constant sense of destruction leading to renewal.
Most of the tension created by Dell leaving seems to be concentrated in tense exchanges between Evvie and her daughter. These interactions contrast with more relaxed snatches of private banter between mother and daughter to show the range of Hosking's skill in portraying the feelings and dialogue of the young child.
Ash Rain is a skilfully crafted novel, full of symbolism and sustained imagery, of the essence of place fused with the essence of person. It is to Hosking's credit that the skilfulness of Ash Rain does not overpower the narrative, and that she avoids the over-writing, over-explaining and other excesses often associated with first novels. Instead, the narrative engages and leaves the reader to unravel stories and draw conclusions.
I thoroughly recommend Ash Rain and hope we can look forward to hearing much more from Corrie Hosking in the future. Citation - Debra Zott. 'Review: Ash Rain by Corrie Hosking' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), April 2004. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 25 May 2013].
Back Cover Blurb - A bushfire in Dell's childhood still haunts her. She dreams up new starts, but her spilling stories cannot over-write the past.
Evvie dances into Dell's life. She has run as far as she can from her family, but her country keeps calling her back.
Evvie's daughter, Luce, is most at home in the company of creatures. All she wants is her collection of bugs and a guinea pig for Christmas.
Dell meets Patrick in the pub, but he's going back to Scotland. Her life finally rupturing, Dell follows. She leaves a hole that Evvie and Luce struggle to fill. They must find each other again, without Dell. And Dell must discover how love works half a world away.
Have You Also Read? The Wakefield Companion to South Australian History
 Wilfrid Prest ed, Kent Town: Wakefield Press, 2002, 635 Pages, Hardback, $79.95Reviewed by Jack Bowers in the June 2003 issue.Wilfrid Prest (ed.)The Kaurna and Peramangk peoples are the traditional owners of the land now known as Adelaide; they are just two of more than fifty Aboriginal groups which comprise South Australia. With The Wakefield Companion to South Australian History, the first such reference book dedicated to the history of a single state, South Australians now have an excellent starting point to learn about and discover their country. The most obvious method of assessment for The Companion is to consider what it includes, what it leaves out, and to expose the biases of the editorial team. Why, for example, does Adelaide Miethke, pioneer of education for girls, get a mention, but Kathleen Mellor, ... read more.
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Issue 44
Popular Music: Practices, Formations and Change - Australian Perspectives
