The Australia Stories

Pierce, whose short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, shapes his first novel as a series of interlocking stories, each exploring different forms of love and loss, from familial to puppy love to the blood's connection to place. The 30-year-old narrator, Sam Browne, spent a year in Australia as a boy, living with his mother who had left his American father to return to her native land. Here he fell in love for the first time, an experience he deftly describes, remembering how, "I felt older, as though my presence filled more of the world than it had just that morning." From his adult perspective he recalls how it distanced him from his mother, "neither of us understanding we had arrived at a crossroads, a place where our paths would slowly move apart, mine leading more toward school and women, hers bringing her more deeply into the country she again called home."As Sam enjoys the first pangs of love, his mother turns to the past, attempting to understand her own mother through her unpublished writings, essays on life and nature she wrote in the years she lived alone in Australia's Blue Mountains after leaving her husband, a man who had always yearned for England. It was only after his grandmother's death - a "walkabout" into the mountains from which she never returned - that Sam's mother returns to Australia and assembles her mother's papers for publication, becoming so absorbed and intrigued that she follows - too literally - in her mother's footsteps.Sam's short marriage disintegrates painfully and inevitably. He too, immerses himself in his grandmother's writings, plumbing his own Australian roots as, more vulnerable, but wiser, he grows into a new love, finds new hope. Pierce has a lot going on - first love, mature love, the emotional resonance of place in self-identity, the difficulty of knowing those closest to us, particularly family. Sam is an introspective, tentative character who makes more effort than most to understand the people in his life. Pierce's writing is nuanced, reflective and assured, with an atmospheric sense of place. A fine debut.

This is a wonderful book, a strange, startling combination of human warmth, passion, local color, wisdom and humor. There is, of course, the Australian setting, new (at least to me) and filled with color and beauty, but it is the people one will remember best, the Uncle, the wives, the mother and grandmother, but mostly the narrator, who guides us through it all and reveals himself as troubled but caring, warm and distant simultaneously, funny and perceptive, and mostly wise without being insufferable. This a really good book, a rare accomplishment.

Todd James Pierce's novel The Australia Stories opens your heart to not one, but two continent's worth of yearning and sadness. This is a book that is as patient and vivid as a bushwalk. Pierce's characters leave the page and enter your world, then invite you back to their world with them. Pierce masters the story, and then steps from behind the storytelling veil in the final section to create a dramatic tension, as well as increased intimacy. A beautiful story unfolds, even as it aches to read it, word after perfect word.

This is an amazing read. Not only does the author build upon his knowledge of the Australian landscape and history, but he engages us with a journey story about familial love and longing. This is a must-read for lovers of all things Australia. Mr. Pierce is a gifted writer with a large appetitite for gorgeous language and rivetting story-telling. I look forward to his next book. Highly recommend it.