This beautiful, lyrical novel manages the difficult task of combining multiple time lines and characters, with jumps back and forth in time, yet it all flows coherently and is not at all confusing.

Set in a small New Zealand town, we are brought in to the world of a small cast of characters and through following them we explore large themes - longing, grieving, mental health, families, belonging, love. All of the characters - from sculptor Delia, her model Jane and nomadic Luke, to the parents of some of the characters - feel very real and complicated rather than just archetypes or token characters written to advance a plot point.

The author also writes beautifully about the landscape, following the water, mountains and sky throughout the seasons. It is as though the landscape is another character rather than a backdrop.

There are some very local terms in this book - not sure many US readers will know what things like 'Stubbies' are - but as an Australian I got them all. I like that the author has considered that her readers will be smart enough to figure out what these terms are from context or go find them out if they really need to.

I received an advanced review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. ( )

Beneath Pale Water by Thalia Henry is a beautifully written fiction. I really liked the style of the author, placing the events in a strategic manner challenging the reader to guess what could be the next scene.
Delia is a young sculptor from Kurow. She is still grieving the loss of her lover Ben when she meets Luke, a wanderer and somehow looks like a twin to Ben. Luke who always dreamed of freedom and who always wanted to be a nomad, feels drawn to Delia.
Jane who is a model for Delia's sculptures plays a very important role. She is also someone who is in love with Luke but the feelings are not reciprocated by Luke.
Delia's mother, Helen, loves her daughter immensely and wants to protect her from all the harm and Luke's father, Alfred, loves his son in his own way.
Thalia wove the story in an extremely beautiful way. The craving for love, freedom and the games that our minds play to have them are depicted in this book in a very unique way. Coming to the geography of the place where this story is set, I must say, I fell in love. The cherry orchards, Lake Aviemore, Ahuriri river, I won't be lying if I said the images are engraved in my brain now after reading the detailing in the book. I badly want to visit Aoraki before I die.
I loved this book. It is a very different love story and it has a subtle pain to it that will haunt you even after turning the last page. ( )

The winter landscape at Aviemore was a different character to the ones Delia had met in summer and autumn. The thin blanket of snow blended with a white sky, rendering outlines indistinguishable. Ice crunched beneath her boots, spreading cracks and shards. The seconds, leading into minutes, were excruciating. Her fingers had become numb, and her nails, when she pressed against them, didn’t spring back with colour. She no longer welcomed the cold.
Her body stiff, she walked towards the lake, reminiscing about a warmer day when she’d walked into the water wearing a sundress. The hues of the scene had been bright then, yellow ochre and piercing blue. The edge of the lake tickled her boots. If she were to paint a scene on a flattened stone now it would be different. The colours would veer towards pastel, influenced by the winter-white glow that surrounded her. The lake had a unique scent to it. (p.175)

This excerpt is just a sample of the exquisite writing in this beautiful book by debut novelist Thalia Henry. The book won the Independent Publisher Book Award for Australia/New Zealand – Best Regional Fiction, and it derives from a play called Powdered Milk (2008).
Set in powerfully evoked landscapes of New Zealand’s South Island (mainly around Dunedin as far as I can tell), the novel focusses on a triangle of characters, all of whom have been damaged by life. Of the three, a sculptor, a nomad and an artist’s model, the nomad seems at first to be the most troubled.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/05/17/beneath-pale-water-by-thalia-henry/ ( )