Alice Springs

At the end of my edition there were a number of questions for discussion that asked English major-type questions. The questions made me laugh because the book was so real on its own, and the questions made it all seem so articifial. And that is the real issue of the book, I think. What is real and what is artificial. Snip worries about whether what she feels for Dave is real love or infatuation. She spends the entire book discovering the reality behind her family, particularly her father. She feels like she really belongs in the community, but she doesn't feel like she can paint there. This is a good book mostly for the unique phrasings. I like the way Gemmell uses language throughout. She knows how to choose a word. Don't be fooled, though. This book is rough. Its themes and language are not for the tenderhearted. I have to say, though, that I think it is rough in a good way.

THE desolate landscapes of central Australia, eerily beautiful and cruel, are superbly evoked in Cleave. Nikki Gemmell's heroine, Snip Freeman, is a painter who, as a child, lived in the centre until her father Bud deserted her. Snip has occasionally lived with the Aborigines, but refuses to settle, flaunting her tough self-sufficiency. Prompted by her grandmother, she heads west from Sydney with a stranger, Dave, in search of Bud, her own childhood and, perhaps, a new life. Gemmell writes brilliantly about the journey, about Snip's insistence that she feels lust, not love, for Dave, and later, about Snip and her father marooned in the desert, both hallucinating as they run out of water and hope.

This is a passionate, driven novel whose main character, the flinty but vulnerable Snip Freeman, has stayed with me long after I finished the book. Gemmell's voice is vivid and poetic, unlike any other I have read. I couldn't put the novel down. It was facinating to read about a place so foreign as the Australian desert, and the central sequence where the protagonists are stranded and running out of time is wonderfully handled. I can imagine this book having a huge fan base, particularly among the sort of readers who loved "The Beach." Powerful stuff.

Haunting hard prose evoking a battle for existence in a place where there is no easy way out, Alice Springs is a peach of a novel. Can't wait for Ms Gemmell's next book.

Phillipa "Snip" Freeman never stays in one place for very long. Relationships are short term and must totally be on Snip's terms. The only things accompanying Snip on her wanderlust throughout Australia is a sleeping bag and her one compassion, her art.Everything suddenly changes when Snip's grandmother dies, leaving a weird inheritance for the endless traveler. Snip received an envelope containing a $30,000 check and a note: "Hunt him down". Snip heeds her grandmother's advice and begins a search in the Outback for her estranged father. On the trip inland, she meets a geologist who accompanies her. The pair begins to fall in love, but Snip uses a minor incident to leave him behind. When she finally finds her father, she asks him what destroyed their family?ALICE SPRINGS is an intriguing introspective search for one's identity. Snip is one of the best characters of the year as her independence and vulnerability constantly battle for supremacy. However, the two male leads seem to only exist as extensions of Snip rather than fully developed characters. The Australian landscape beautifully adds to the harshness of the quest. Nikki Gemmell provides readers with a profound tale of finding one's inner essence. The soul searching adventure will garner much attention from fans who enjoy a story line that centers on the conflicting psyche that make up a human being.Harriet Klausner