And then things get seriously weird, with Eleanor plagued at every turn by comparisons with the previous teacher, the oh-so-perfect Miss Barker, who mysteriously disappeared. There are also some sincerely strange town residents, which made me never want to go to Talbingo. Eleanor’s love interest stalks kangaroos and tells her she smells like a damp cupboard and deserved to get cancer. If there’s a list of actions calculated to make you scream “RUN” at an unattached girl when she’s contemplating a new love interest, those three things have got to be pretty high up on that list. And then there’s Ryan, the love interest’s  even odder brother….

The last one third of the novel is in turns confusing and disturbing: as readers we are at the mercy of Eleanor, who becomes an increasingly unreliable narrator as her grip on reality slips. It reminded me very much of Darren Aronofsky’s movie Mother! For the first two thirds you’re totally getting it and loving it, then at the end you walk away not entirely sure what happened, and just feeling deeply and quietly disturbed.

But wow, what a ride. This is the most original novel I’ve read in a long time. It’s worth being deeply and quietly disturbed.

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Between a wolf and dog is apparently translated from a French phrase, referencing the time of night just after sunset when it is difficult to determine the shape of a wolf from a dog, or a friend from an enemy. The novel is set mostly during one rainy Sydney day; its ending is quite devastating but oh so right. All the characters are fully formed and the writing is immeasurably beautiful. This is the kind of book you press on your friends and say if you don’t like this book, we can’t be friends anymore. 

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The three women, friends from high school, are retracing their steps from a three day trek they took more than twenty years earlier. In the original hike, the women were dogged and taunted by a man whose unseen presence poisoned the peace of their surroundings and eventually lead to a sickening confrontation.

The Geography of Friendship is about the often complicated nature of women’s relationships with one another, and the effect of nature on the human psyche. But mostly it is about humiliation, and how the experience of humiliation leaves an indelible stain on the soul:

“Lisa might have little physical memory of him now, but what she hasn’t been able to shut out is the ugly geography of her own failings in the face of him. This is the thing that haunts her. Not the man.”

Such stunning writing. A intelligent Australian thriller, written by a writer who understands women. So many reasons to love this book.

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