Musician and writer Holly Throsby says she certainly thinks about rhythm when she’s writing.Credit:Yanni Kronenberg
This is the premise ofClarke,the third novel from musician-turned-author Holly Throsby. It’s the story of those on the periphery of a violent crime:the neighbours,the innocents,the collateral damage,the connections and concentric circles that radiate from it. Barney,who has no furniture in his rented house,has become detached from his family,and Leonie,his neighbour,has a little boy with her whose mother is nowhere to be seen. There is seeping loss all along the street.
Throsby had been listening toThe Teacher’s Pet podcast about the disappearance of Lynette Dawson,when she was driving around promoting her last book,Cedar Valley. “The interest to me really started with the idea that when the police searched the house in Bayview the occupants were unaware of the house’s history. That was the starting point for this book.”
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Clarke has a slower tempo and mood than the brilliantly funnyGoodwood,her first bestselling novel,and the dry wit and world in microcosm that isCedar Valley. Though all three novels are linked by their geography – a fictitious rural setting of mountain and river south of Sydney – the characters in the earlier novels travel to the larger Clarke and its shopping plaza. In all three books,set in the early ’90s,people disappear or die in mysterious circumstances and the membrane that holds a small town together,the ecosystem of a community,is torn apart.
Throsby has said that they are “anti-crime” books,that she enjoys “subverting expectations”;with her knowing,laconic humour she likes a lot of light with her dark. Her characters and their foibles are acutely observed.
“I like watching people all the time,like a total creep,just sitting on a park bench or something,” she says. But it is not until the third or fourth draft of a book that the characters become “more and more dimensional” until “they become wholly their own person and I consider how they would act themselves”.
Before the novels,Throsby was known as an ARIA award-winning musician,who released six deeply personal,delicate solo albums and two albums withSarah Blasko and Sally Seltmann and their indie-rock group,Seeker Lover Keeper. It is a big leap from a four-minute song,to a 400-page novel.