Life Before, by Carmel Reilly

The story starts in July 1993 with a cop about to do a death knock after a fatal crash in the country town of Northam, in Victoria. It then leaps forward to Melbourne in 2013, where some cops notify a woman that her brother has been knocked off his bike in a hit and run. Back to March 1993 and the teen years of the woman, Loren, and her brother Scott from the point of view of their mother Pam. We keep jumping back and forth in time as the older Loren, or Lori – the author can’t seem to make up her mind – very gradually comes to terms with her past. It takes a very long time to discover who died and why Scott and Loren were estranged for 20 years, and along the way we are told the name of every street in Northam, how they’re laid out and who lives there. In fact there is far too much tedious description of everything, while the device of the past unrolling from Pam’s perspective preserves the mystery but prevents empathy for Loren. It’s difficult to understand why she still keeps the story from her husband once she decides to visit her brother in hospital. It doesn’t take a genius to know that putting the telling into the too hard basket will make it so much worse when the truth eventually comes out. While the scale of the tragedy in the past is a surprise much else is very predictable and the ending is a little too pat.