Hinterland, Steven Lang’s third novel, is a very Australian story – a very Queensland story if it comes to that – but its themes are universal. All over the world people living in lovely places find themselves having to defend their patch against development. As in other places around the world, all around the Australian coastline, and in congenial inland places within commuting distance of the overcrowded cities, there are plans for apartments and housing developments, holiday and weekender accommodation, shopping centres, and posh new mansions for the multi-homed rich. That kind of development breeds infrastructure development: bigger roads, sewage and rubbish disposal systems, electricity and water supply. In Lang’s new novel set in the fictional town of Winderran, plans for a dam are ruffling feathers and not just because it would cut through some land that’s been restored from desertification.

The cast of characters includes tree-changers, blow-in greenies and people with long-established roots in the district. These characters are introduced by multiple narrators who all know each other with varying degrees of familiarity, each narration having its own distinctive voice. The story begins through Miles, the ageing doctor who’s taken to dealing with grief after the death of his wife, with alcohol. He knows everybody, from old Margaret Ewart living an independent life in dignified poverty, to Helen Lamprey, dying from cancer while her husband Guy, an author who’s lost his mojo, flirts with politics as a career alternative. Through Miles the reader sees that the town has a population of older residents augmented by the influx of wealthy retirees, and children. The generation in between has mostly fled, for brighter prospects elsewhere, though some are trickling in to service the needs of the growing population in places like the hospital and the medical centre. And – isolating themselves on the edge of town – there are also some creepy army veterans whose psychological damage distorts the ordinary humanity that most people share.

The second narrator, Dr Nick Lasker, has come to Winderran to escape his failed marriage, not deluding himself as to its cause. He’s an incorrigible womaniser who knows he should know better. Yet everywhere he goes, he’s sizing women up. In a bar where he’s hoping to meet up with an attractive nurse, he’s still eyeing off other women while he waits:

She stood up, almost colliding with a young man coming in the door. Nick watched as she wove her way back through the tables. A nice shape to her hips. Miles had said something to him one night in reference to women, how they no longer exerted power over him in the way they once had. Women, he’d said, had become just like other people now … he could relate to them based on who they were, on what they said or thought, as if they were nothing more than attractively shaped men. It wasn’t a concept Nick could even begin to embrace. (p.164)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/07/13/hinterland-by-steven-lang/ ( )