Zhi - The Children

... approached with the sensitivity and acuity that is Woods strength... remarkable in her forensic abilities... The Children confirms her as a captivating, questing writer whose work is well worth watching.

Stella Clarke, The Weekend Australian

One rereads the novel not for its shock value but for its nuances, its deep questions and its lovely supple prose. For this is a vibrant, intelligent, utterly compelling work, achingly real and seductively woven with a restrained consonance of connected images that build through the novel to a final symbolic release.

Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser

... The Children is beautifully and tightly shaped around Geoff Connolly lying insensate, tied to a breathing machine. His family waits, attacking one another but also finding and creating surprising moments of tenderness... Wood... has the ability to evoke matters of life and death without straining for effect. Her prose is convincing and her images precise...

Dorothy Johnston, Sydney Morning Herald

... The Children is Woods best work yet... makes the most ordinary moments glow: her sensitivity to visual detail cuts to the quick. Little escapes her, and the result is a graceful and empathetic portrayal of one family seeking to understand itself.

Stephanie Bishop, Australian Book Review

The bringing-together of an atomised family for an occasion or crisis is a time-honoured narrative strategy in fiction and film, and Wood makes the most of its possibilities both for drama and for social commentary... The reunion of three childless adult siblings plus their mother and brother-in-law makes for some very astute observation of how that family dynamic plays out, and also for some rather grim comedy as the demons of childhood rivalry and dislike re-emerge as ferocious and illogical as they were the first time around.

Kerryn Goldsworthy, The Age

Charlotte Woods writing is haunting, building tension so subtly the action hits like an unexpected blow. Her characters are wounded and human, their dialogue profound without meaning to be. Simple and real, this is a beautifully heavy and affecting story that will linger in your mind long after you've read the last page. **** Highly recommended.

Anabel Pandiella, Good Reading

The Children captivates from the first dramatic paragraph... transfixing... An Australian Jodi Picoult? Definitely comparable to Picoults themes, but more aware of, and attuned and appealing to Australian readers of the literary family drama, laced with social commentary and mystery. **** An excellent book

Lucy Meredith, Bookseller & Publisher

Intriguing... excellent reading. Graham Clark, Courier-Mail

... a perceptive and dark examination of a family unwilling exploring what holds it together and what has driven it apart.

The Dominion Post Weekend

CHARLOTTE
WOOD

This edition published in 2008

First published in 2007

Copyright Charlotte Wood 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

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Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

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National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Wood, Charlotte, 1965 .

The children.

ISBN 978 1 74175 604 3 (pbk.).

I. Title.

A823.3

Internal design by Greendot Design

Set in 13.5/16 pt MrsEaves by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For sisters and little brothers, especially mine
and
always,
for Sean

Who said Happiness is the light shining on the water.

The water is cold and dark and deep...

WILLIAM MAXWELL , Over by the River, All the Days and Nights

GEOFF SHOVES the ladderthunkagainst the house, and kicks hard at the bottom rung to dig its heels more solidly into the soil of the garden bed. Then he picks up the plastic shopping bag of newspaper-wrapped tiles and begins to climb, the bag heavy in the crook of his elbow as he moves.

He bought the tiles from Macquarie Hardware this morning. He stood in the queue in the cavernous building, as he does most Saturdays, holding the one or two things he needs for the weekends domestic repairsa packet of wall plugs, or a couple of star pickets. This morning after he bought the tiles he walked out into the bright glare of the car park. He put the bag of tiles into the boot of the Falcon and then walked back across the car park to the half-case supermarket, pulling from his pocket the shopping list in Margarets looped blue handwriting. Although it was early, already the car park was busy with slow cars, with shopping trolleys tinging over the bitumen. Rundle was coming slowly alive for its Saturday.

He emerged from the gloomy little arcade carrying Margarets extra-large bag of flour against his chest. He shifted the bag to his hip as he bent to unlock the boot againand as he did a sudden, shocked recognition sprang up at him: the bag was the exact soft weight of a sleeping baby. He was surprised by the physicality of this memory, its strength. He hasnt held a baby in more than thirty years.

Now, as he climbs the ladder, he is puzzled in a pleasing way again at the mysterious and intricate workings of the human brain. He pictures it, a mass of tiny, coloured electrical wires the thickness of hairs. As he climbs, the plastic bag slides forward, its handles cutting into the skin of his forearm; he shrugs his shoulder to shift it down his arm. Near the top of the ladder he steadies himself, pressing his hips forward against the last several rungs, and then lifts the bag carefully into the guttering, making sure the tiles cannot slide away.

Geoff knows the brain doesnt look like electrical wiring, but all the same he likes the image: an old, corroded thread of wire, deep in the tangle, suddenly sending out a hot white spark of memory.

He climbs the last few rungs, hunching, tilting himself forward, and crawls up onto the roof. He is too aware of his ageing body, of the anticipatory decisions he must always make now about its movement. He steadies himself for a moment, kneeling there on all fours on the sloping tiled surface. He glances about at the bright roofs of his neighbours, the fresco of red and orange tiles, of telephone wires and television aerials and sky. A mynah bird perches on the Collins aerial, frowning out of its dark yellow-rimmed eye for a moment before flying off. The aerial quivers, an echo of flight.

Geoff crawls a little further onto the roof and then, when it is safe to do so, turns to sit on the slanting tiles, his bony knees apart, hands dangling between them. From here he can see off into the distance outside town, the flat plains, the painted striations of river and hill and horizon. He draws his gaze closer then, to the furze of trees lining the river, nearer again, to the bright metallic sheet of the fire station roof over on Fitzroy Street, then the few houses beyond his, then to the Collins next door, and his own backyard. From here the view of his yard is spacious, surprising, making the place where he has lived for more than thirty-five years suddenly unfamiliar. He stares down over his garage roof, his barbecue, his pergola. His intimacy with it is in this instant scrubbed away, and he is struck by a light, strange feeling that there might yet be things to discover down there, in his yard, in his life.