Highway Thirteen by Fiona McFarlane

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 13, 2024

The stories in Highway Thirteen are linked by Paul Biga, a (fictional) serial killer who abducted and kidnapped a dozen girls he found walking on an Australian highway between 1990 and 1997. The stories take place at different times over the last fifty years, apart from one set in 1950 and another in 2028. Taken together, they examine the impact that a single criminal had on multiple lives across time and continents.

I was impressed by nine of the twelve stories, a higher average than is typical for a short story collection. A couple of stories are about secret thoughts. In “Tourists,” a walk in a forest where a serial killer buried his victims might spark an office romance — or a rejection. During the walk, the woman senses evil, while the man envisions himself killing his walking companion.

Also based on hidden thoughts, “Hunter on the Highway” (my favorite story in the book) takes place after a female hitchhiker is attacked. The victim’s description of her attacker matches May’s boyfriend. He’s an uncomplicated, likable bar band musician but does she really know him? Will she talk herself into believing that he’s a killer and calling a hotline to report her suspicion? The story has something important to say about how media hype associated with crime pollutes the heads of people who begin to see criminals everywhere.

“Demolition” builds on familiar news interviews of neighbors who say that the serial killer next door kept to himself and was “just a little off.” Paul Biga lived across the street from Eva. When he was a child, he helped her with gardening. As a retired teacher who taught Biga, she knows that all adolescents are strange and bewildered. Paul did not seem unusually strange, although she didn’t tell the journalist who interviewed her (for the second time, on the occasion of Biga’s home’s demolition) about the disturbing letter he wrote her.

A couple of other stories are also based on memories. The Englishman in “Abroad” attempts to cope with Halloween in America, a celebration of the supernatural that forces him to acknowledge memories of his sister’s unexplained disappearance in Australia when he was a child and how it changed his father’s life. In “Hostess,” a retired flight attendant reflects with melancholy upon the time he shared a home, and sometimes a bed, with another retired flight attendant and her faithful dog. The connection to Biga comes from the female flight attendant’s attempt to persuade her sister to end her engagement to an older man who (in the flight attendant’s opinion) is creepy.

“Fat Suit” is about an Australian actor whose Hollywood marriage is breaking up just as he begins filming a movie in which he plays the famous serial killer (he got fat after years in jail). The story illustrates how one thought sparks another as the actor contemplates his father’s death, his failed marriage, his relationship with his stepchildren, and whales.

While a majority of the stories are serious, some are infused with dark humor. The narrator of “Hostel” tells the story of Mandy and Roy, who like to tell the story of the Swiss backpacker they found weeping outside a hostel — a girl who later was murdered. The narrator imagines herself in the Swiss girl’s position as she entertains fantasies about Roy. “Hostel” uses humor to capture the truth of its characters: “It’s not that Mandy was vain; she just liked to be good at everything she did. So she liked to be good at having a body.”

Fiona McFarlane’s humor is fully displayed in “Democracy Sausage.” A political candidate named Biga isn’t sure whether he is related to the infamous serial killer, but he questions whether voters will disassociate him from his “blackened” name. While Biga is hosting a backyard barbeque, a dog “came springing out from the underbrush of a local riverside path with, between his teeth, a large rubber dildo, the colour of fair flesh but streaked with silty mud, resembling nothing so much as a poorly barbequed sausage.”

Set in 2028, “Podcast” is written in the form of a transcript of a very funny true crime podcast. A recently discovered body that might be linked to Biga (now eight years dead) is the podcast’s subject, although the discussion is quickly diverted to a gossipy account of a podcaster’s gay marriage (his husband doesn’t understand the true crime obsession) and speculation about life in Australia, a country the podcasters have never visited. The podcast tangentially addresses the concept of murder as entertainment, which is an apt description of true crime books, movies, TV shows, and podcasts.

The way in which McFarlane links such diverse stories is dazzling. Biga is in the background of each story, sometimes so tangentially that it takes a bit of effort to understand how he relates to the story’s characters, yet the stories shy away from the gruesome details of murder. They touch instead on the lives of people who feel the impact of Biga’s crimes, sometimes without even knowing that a crime occurred. Many of the individual stories are memorable. Collectively, they gain additional power. Highway Thirteen might be a good choice for a crime fiction book club in search of an offbeat offering that moves beyond the genre's cliches.

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The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on February 14, 2023

In Swedish, the sun doesn’t set; it “walks down.” Or so says Karl Rapp, a Swedish painter who is believes the fierce sky in South Australia must be illuminated by a different sun. While a sunrise might be “the soft but sturdy pink of a cat’s paw” or the “glossy pink of Bess Rapp’s neck,” it is the deep demonic reds of the Australian sunset that inspire him.

The Sun Walks Down is set in South Australia. The plot unfolds during a week in 1883, although backstories offer a wealth of information about the history of the characters and the region.

A lost child is at the center of a wide-ranging story of gossip, judgment, fear, mistakes, mundane life, and discrimination against indigenous people. The child, Denny, is one of seven children of Mary and Mathew Wallace. Denny becomes lost when he is sent to gather kindling as a windstorm arrives on the wedding day of Robert Manning and Minna Baumann. The dust is blowing with such force that Minna's father brings a pony into the church during the wedding. Shearers are about to arrive at the stations, an inopportune time for a child to disappear.

Robert, a local constable, organizes a search for Denny. Denny’s sister Cecily insists on joining Robert's search. Matthew conducts his own search with the help of Billy Rough, the indigenous employee who lets him win their nightly fistfights. Sergeant Foster from the Port Augusta police brings two indigenous trackers, despite his dislike of “blackfellows.”

Denny is afraid during his trek through the desert, but his fears are driven by myths and Bible stories, not by an encounter with a malicious person. Suspicions of foul play are nevertheless fueled by a bloody handkerchief, the light of a distant fire at night, and the recovery of the child’s boots. Nearly everyone is viewed with suspicion, particularly indigenous men, but even Denny’s mother and the local vicar are on Foster’s radar.

While Denny’s disappearance is the adhesive that joins the characters together, most of the novel explores the complexity of their simple lives. Fiona McFarlane explains why Karl and his wife Bess decided to leave Sweden and the ironic erosion of Karl’s trust in Bess. McFarlane traces the history of the Baumann family before and after it planted roots in Australia. She presents Minna as a desire-driven woman to whom the fidelity of marriage will clearly be a challenge, a woman who hoped that marriage would liberate her from her mother’s moods. Minna enjoyed kissing Karl shortly before (and again after) she married Robert, but believes the pleasure she derives from other men is proof of her love for Robert.

McFarlane portrays Cecily as a young woman at a crossroads, faced with the possibility of doing something special with her life or trading an education for the meager but secure income of manual labor. Cecily wants to “burn with one true and important idea” but doesn’t want to choose an idea; she wants the idea to choose her. Cecily’s teacher advises her that women like Cecily “don’t wait for our hearts to decide anything for us. We don’t fall in love — we stride into it. We choose.” Cecily believes herself to be in love with Robert and perhaps with all men of a certain type.

Lesser characters weave into the story, playing important if tangential roles. A man with a camel from Pashtun has a telling conversation with Minna about the local German prostitute, famously known for draping a blanket over her donkey when her services are engaged. The vicar joins the search for Denny, or perhaps he just wants to be by himself.

Billy Rough learned the game of cricket and excels at bowling but his skin color kept him from playing outside of South Australia. Tal, the best tracker among local the indigenous people, turns out to be the novel’s most sensible character. Ralph “Bear” Axam believes himself to be in love with Minna, perhaps because she is newly married and therefore safe to love. Even the novel’s dogs are given distinct personalities.

Denny’s story is not meant to be dramatic — to most characters, his disappearance is a nuisance that distracts from the serious work of eking out a living in an unforgiving land — but its resolution is satisfying. The novel’s beauty lies in its details. Bullocks and wallabies witness human folly. The possum-fur coat worn by a tracker with an injured arm is coveted by a white woman who hides her own injured arm in a shawl that lacks the same mystical qualities. A burning tree, set afire to guide Denny home, inspires the religious fervor of a burning bush. Denny’s grandfather, a man who “keeps a vigilant watch on his bowel movements” and would “prefer to hear no more than one new piece of information a day,” devotes himself to ineffectual prayer when he learns of Denny’s disappearance. Foster’s ruminations about “true pioneers” illustrate the inflated self-importance of those who mistake humility for weakness.

McFarlane creates a convincing world that exists in a time and place distant from our own, yet her characters could live in any place at any time. Their varying responses to a moment of crisis in a frontier community make The Sun Walks Down a remarkable novel.

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