Secrets of the Sea
by Nicholas Shakespeare
Nicholas Shakespeare’s new novel is set in Wellington Point, an inauspicious fictional Tasmanian town. It is a place offering few prospects: the only jobs are menial, and the only person with any vim is the odious Ray Grogan, an estate agent who seduces local women by comparing them to the Taj Mahal by moonlight. People who move to Wellington Point do so, more often than not, for a quiet life.
One such person is Alex Dove. Alex’s English parents arrived, full of hope, in Wellington Point before Alex was born, but his father became inward and alcoholic, interested only in building ships in bottles. He and his wife were killed in a car crash when Alex was 11, and Alex was sent to England. He went back to Wellington Point at 23 and stayed there, renovating his parents’ old house and farm and trying to find some identity in a place where he is eternally regarded as a ‘pom’.
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