Book Club

[LoriLori]

This is so spoiler-y I want to be sure.  If you have not read The Dry and Force of Nature and The Lost Man do not read any further!  Spoilers!

[LoriLori]

Did you get the connection between The Dry and The Lost Man?  I didn't.   I read about it after I finished The Lost Man and went OMG, missed that!  I'm usually a good reader but that one sailed right over my head.

[Alter Ego]

What was the connection? I’m bad at things like that - making connections when there’s nothing there or missing obvious things outright’ 😊

[LoriLori]

Spoiler

Relatively early in The Lost Man we learn that Liz took the kids to Kiewarra for the funeral of her niece and then a second time for the funeral of her brother.  Ellie Deacon is the girl who was murdered in The Dry by her father,  who was abusing her.  Mal Deacon is Liz's brother. 

So both siblings, Mal and Liz, murdered their own children.  And in The Dry, Aaron was blamed and ostracized in Kiewarra the way Nathan is blamed and shunned for what Cameron did in The Lost Man.

Wish I had caught it but I re-read that part, it's brief but it's there and it's brilliant foreshadowing.  I've already given both books away so I can't cite a page.  Sorry.  But when it was pointed out I loved the book even more!!!

Another thing, which I posted when I finished The Lost Man and its not a spoiler:   The Stockman's Grave is something known in the outback as a "lonely grave."  If you google "lonely grave" there are many of them.  So eerie and sad.

[LoriLori]

Sorry, @Alter Ego , forgot to notify you.  Isn't it remarkable?  And do look at the lonely graves.  Mind-blowing and it helped me wrap my mind around how a single landowner in the outback can own land the size of the entire U.K.

[smoky22]

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@LoriLori wrote:

Did you get the connection between The Dry and The Lost Man?  I didn't.   I read about it after I finished The Lost Man and went OMG, missed that!  I'm usually a good reader but that one sailed right over my head.

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@LoriLori  I read a few reviews that made a reference to that connection.  I didn't get it either.  To be honest, I read the The Dry so long ago there's no way I would have remembered it.  Thanks for the explanation.

[Alter Ego]

I hadn’t read about the connection, but will admit that it makes sense as those particular parts of The Lost Man seemed a little randomly thrown in (which usually means they are important.) I may have “hmmmm’d” at the location name as being familiar, but I also listened to The Dry when it first came out and that was a few years ago. Is still an interesting connection.

(Heck, maybe the author mentioned it in the interview at the end of the Audible, but I couldn’t get passed her ummmmmms and didn’t finish listening to it.)

[number one queen]

@smoky22  I must also admit  I missed that too, I went back and reread through that part. What a smooth move that was. Another great book !!

[LoriLori]

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@number one queen wrote:

@smoky22  I must also admit  I missed that too, I went back and reread through that part. What a smooth move that was. Another great book !!

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Numberonequeen, that is a perfect description!  "Smooth move!"  I love it!

[LoriLori]

Here's some pics of lonely graves.  Definitely worth a google.  The landscape so unreal.  The graves so sad and kind of staggering: 

I just read that some people choose to hike around and look at the lonely graves by GPS.  How can they do that?  Don't they know the odds of ending up in one?  (If they're ever even found!)

There are also books of picture after picture of lonely graves.  I'm sad now.  How do people live in the outback?  Well, we know from Jane Harper, not easily...I need to go look at a kitten video or something.