Cold Skin by Steven Herrick

“If you don’t look at what’s in front of you, /you get overrun from behind.” Herrick’s novel-in-verse is a meditation on the hold the past can have on people, as their actions threaten to sink their futures under waves of paralyzing regret or rash decisions driven by unfulfilled desires. Set in a tiny Australian mining town a few years after World War II, it is a simple tale of two generations (told in nine distinct voices) struggling to cope with the murder of a young woman. Eddie Holding wants nothing more than to quit school and work in the mines, like all the other grown men in Burruga. His father Albert has forbidden it, fearful of the dangerous work and filled with rage at his perceived cowardice during the war. Other characters include the aging editor of the town’s small newspaper, a young police sergeant, the glad-handing mayor, and a lecherous teacher at the high school. Everyone has their issues, and the murder of young Colleen, destroying the town’s sleepy status quo, is the stimulus for each character’s fascinatingly varied manner of confronting their demons. A violent and morally ambivalent resolution to the murder case thus is almost as unsettling for the sense of relief it provides some of the characters (and the reader) as it is for the nature of the action it consists of. Herrick does a great job of creating a distinct voice for each character, with the exception of Eddie’s love interest Sally (who is rather one-dimensional and unnecessary), using clean, simple verse that avoids elaborate metaphors and overblown imagery in favor of the occasional stroke of insight, made more powerful for its subtle, offhand manner. The murder doesn’t really present much of an opportunity for readers to solve the case, but does make for an exciting psychological study of small-town life turned upside down. Mild profanity throughout, a scene of prostitution, heavy alcohol use, and a disturbing scene of violence. Ages 13+.