For many religious people, the act of believing in something that cannot be seen is itself a sign of faith. When birds start falling from the sky and crops suddenly appear in a town already suffering from poverty and where jobs are being laid off, people turn to faith and religion. Widowed Father John, who is seeing visions of his wife, says he will help people in their time of need; he hands out loaves and fishes, and asks townsfolk to come to church, where he performs baptisms.

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Mary becomes a sign of hope and salvation as the town gradually becomes untethered. Sins against children happen when people in positions of authority are not made accountable, and in hindsight Hannah feels bad that she didnt do more for Mary.

Noske moves subtly through the difficulty of pinpointing where it started. Sustained throughout the narrative is the question of what level of responsibility we have to minors who are not in our direct care. The community has secrets; dubious behaviours go unreported, and the threat of violence is constant. A father refuses to sign scholarship forms that might allow his daughter entry into a city school. The air is full of mute masculinity that responds only to alcohol and fists.

In the end, Noske writes, they had no one but themselves to fill the hole theyd shaped in their own lives, nothing at the centre of it but fear and blame.

In this moody, gothic debut, Noske shows the way in which individuals can turn into a violent horde. The retelling of events includes dreams and protracted reminiscences to explain why things unfolded the way they did. The voice looking back adds distance so that we are at a remove from the drama, and throughout the choppy narrative the characters motives are muddy. As a result of this, despite the confident, authoritative storytelling, the novels impact is more intellectual than emotional.

Sophie Hardcastle writes with the confidence of an experienced storyteller.Credit:Natasha Shoory

Trauma wends its way through both of these novels emotional, psychological, sexual and physical. Below Deck begins with 21-year-old Oli waking on a boat, and its unclear at first, to us and to Oli, whether shes had a crazy fun young-person time or if shes been kidnapped. This sets the scene for a book that features horror on the high seas as well as sweet, youthful joy.

Olis stroke of luck is meeting Mac and Maggie, a pair of old friends whose experiences of life have given them a deep love of the sea, and the wisdom and warmth that Olis life has been devoid of. When Maggie explains her synaesthesia, Oli, who experiences her grandfathers shout as a shock of lime green, realises its something they have in common. In Maggie particularly, she has met a kindred spirit.

Sophie Hardcastles clear, concise language evokes the feeling of meeting someone who feels already known, and the depths of truly meaningful friendship.

Maggies favourite book is A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebeca Solnit, who, in Men Explain Things to Me, writes, Some women get erased a little at a time, some all at once. For Oli, it was both a little at a time her father, her boyfriend Adam, that yoyo of abuse and, later in the book, all at once.

Some reappear, Solnit continues. Every woman who appears wrestles with the forces that would have her disappear. Oli finds a way to reappear, and the rest of the story is her wrestling with how to be.

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Hardcastle has written a memoir and a YA novel but this is her first novel for adults. It is a singular tale, very reflective of the zeitgeist, with a lot to say about the nature of consent, robust friendship, the human relationship with the natural world, and what it takes to be woke in an unjust world. The novel is written with the confidence of an experienced storyteller, someone who understands pace, and the importance of leaving space in a text.

The small cruelty of flicking wet, recently-washed hands onto another person is symbolic of larger violence, and Oli is punished, repeatedly, for being female. Women are unlucky on boats too distracting. If boys will be boys then, it would appear, men will be men. Yet, all this heavy drama is presented with a light touch, the plot is exacting, and the characters are blazingly strong.

Oli is offered a cigarette and goes to take one, then reconsiders. Pretending to smoke would surely be worse than passing up the offer. This wrestling with the multitudes of momentous and tiny ways in which women are forced to adapt, act, pretend, mould, anticipate, rehearse and decode is something Hardcastle achieves throughout the book and she does so meticulously, with resounding success.

Sophie Hardcastle discusses her work in a Sydney Writers' Festival podcast: swf.org.au

The rest is here:

The myriad consequences of trauma - Sydney Morning Herald