Islands, by Peggy Frew

Victoria’s Phillip Island is the setting for much of this novel about a disintegrating marriage and the lonely outcrops it makes of each family member. Helen and John married straight out of Uni in the 70s and had two daughters, smart, independent Junie and wild, dreamy Anna. The story zaps back and forward in time, showing the family’s origins, background, development and downfall in a series of fragments. These snapshots of events, encounters and moments in time are told from a dizzying multiplicity of points of view, some family members, some friends, acquaintances and schoolmates. Each fragments builds the picture of who these four people are, what happened to them and the fallout of the failure of a family. Mostly it’s about elder daughter June, but it all revolves around the disappearance of Anna, at the age of 15. Did she run away? Was she kidnapped? Is she alive or dead? And who is to blame? The questions are never answered, for the reader or for the people in her life. This leaves the larger question of just how do you deal with that?