The Wonder of Seldom Seen introduces us to Miles Jordon, an author of one novel who is struggling with his second. Miles and his wife are long separated and we join the action as Miles is leaving the marital home for good (he has been living there while his wife lived elsewhere).
Straight away, the reader is presented with a strong feeling of melancholy and sadness – there is a very definite feeling of a final goodbye. It’s also clear that this couple has suffered a severe loss which has caused the breakdown of the marriage.
We follow Miles as he drives up the Gippsland Highway with his faithful companion, his dog Roley, and almost immediately we are caught up in a number of strange events and sinister characters as Miles tries to find a new start to his life.
The story is written very honestly, with every character’s good and bad points on open display. The language is very realistic for the characters and does not gloss over some of the more awkward moments (as when Miles becomes involved with the wife of a drunk, violent caravan park owner). If you are looking for light and funny…look elsewhere.
But there is another part to this story – somewhere along the way we are introduced to a second set of characters who inhabit the moody underworld of crime. Eventually the two stories do meet, right at the end of the book, and a number of loose ends are attempted to be cleared up. It’s this part of the story that doesn’t sit well with me. It almost feels as though the author was writing two separate stories to start off with but, for some reason, decided to merge them.
Miles ends up in Seldom Seen, in Victoria’s high country, and embarks on various relationships with the locals. He is also involved in a car accident (for which he is hospitalised), discovers some sort of ancient rock carving (the insinuation is that this may be alien although that is never cleared up), unravels a years-old mystery (an unsolved murder case) and manages to complete his second novel. This is all while he is the police’s main suspect in a murder investigation.
At times the writing is beautifully poignant – Miles’ grief at losing his dog, for example – but this second story line keeps intruding on what could be a very honest, real account of moving on and finding a new life. The second story line involves corrupt police, underworld gangs and unscrupulous criminals and just feels completely out of place within the main story. The action is over-the-top, unnecessarily dramatic and, at times, makes no sense at all. Too many characters and too much action make it hard to keep track of who is where, when and how.
The publisher’s blurb on the back claims the book is “fresh, compulsively readable fiction that transcends genre” but I’m not sure I agree.
