The Sun Walks Down is Fiona McFarlane’s second novel and it is as extraordinary as her first. While The Night Guest dealt with the life of an elderly woman who thought she had a tiger in the house, The Sun Walks Down presents us with a whole community.
Set in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia in 1883, The Sun Walks Down shows us the harshness of life in that desert-like region as well as the rugged beauty of the landscape, both described in beautiful poetic language. McFarlane refers to the spectacular sunsets of the region with a Swedish phrase, ‘the sun walks down’ to produce the arresting title of the book. She uses highly original metaphors which sometimes soar off into the metaphysical. She invokes gods who walk out of the sun.
The novel begins with a six-year-old boy, Denny, setting out with a sack to gather firewood for his mother. A giant dust storm overcomes Denny, and he becomes lost. His disappearance affects the lives of all manner of people in his small town and its surrounds. They all rally to search for Denny and support his mother while she waits for his return.
Although the central tension of the book lies in concern for the boy’s safety, the sensitive exploration of the lives of the surrounding characters is, in my view, the crowning achievement of the novel. McFarlane takes each character in turn and allows us to see the world from their perspective.
While everyone in the book knows about the boy’s disappearance, and some are intimately involved in waiting or searching for him, for others the lost boy is something on the periphery of their lives. In this novel, McFarlane has captured the fascinating variety of human lives and the truism that, even when united in a common cause like the search for a missing boy, everyone has their own wants and needs.
The Sun Walks Down is one of those rare books which completely immerses you as a reader. You walk away with images and phrases ringing in your mind, and a whole new community to keep you company long after you’ve finished reading.
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The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane.
Published by Allen & Unwin, 2022.
ISBN: 978 1 76106 620 7, 393 pages.