"Confluence" by Gemma Chilton

 

When the characters become real to us, we understand we’re reading effective fiction. When this realism leads to hoping for the best for this imaginary person, when their hopes become our hopes, the fiction we’re reading is now more than effective, it’s engaging. It bonds us, it recruits us in the service of its cast. The depth of our feeling for Liam, the young man wrestling with his memory—which is perhaps unreliable—of a pivotal traumatic event from his childhood, is the only yardstick you’ll need to measure the solid worth of Gemma Chilton’s Confluence. It’s a remarkably accomplished work for debut fiction; I couldn’t wait to get back to it each time I was forced to put it down.

We meet Liam as he struggles in an uninspiring job in Sydney and an affair he’s not particularly invested in. When his mother calls with bad news about her health, he quits his job, and his sometime partner, to move back into their home near the ocean. It’s where he grew up, and unfortunately the scene of a mysterious and horrifying episode in which his father disappears. Liam was only ten years old at the time. He tries hard to deal with, and to trust, the spotty memories surrounding this incident. He finds it impossible, and must confront not only the ineluctable truth that his dad’s not coming back, but his own inability to move on from it. He’s never stopped searching for his missing dad; it’s a habit he formed early on, and has been in thrall to it for nearly twenty years.

Chilton treads a path through this thicket by alternating time frames between past and present. Her use of this device is perfect, unfolding the story with steady, digestible revelations as we go. All the while we feel sympathy with our young questor, his mother and missing father, and the intriguing young Thai/Aussie woman who shows an interest in him. The author rushes nothing, neither does she dawdle; her pace is exactly what it should be in a taut family drama. One hesitates to label this a coming-of-age story, but Liam’s emotional journey prior to the novel’s events has been stunted, blocked by his father’s disappearance and probable death.

I do not want to paint this as a depressing book. It’s the opposite. Human shortcomings, in the dicey tumult of a lifetime, affect everyone. Some people’s intentions are lacking, or limited, or simply immoral, but the principal characters here shine with friendship, decency, and compassion. Chilton resolves the conundrums and roadblocks and traps people find themselves in, without resorting to facility, or cliché, or hackneyed device. This is honest, strong fiction, and I welcome a new author in the literary fold.