The Railwayman's Wife by Ashley Hay

JUDGES' COMMENTS

Among many recent books addressing the subject of war and its aftermath, Ashley Hay’s beautiful novel takes an oblique approach through the interwoven stories of three characters in the fragile years after World War II. In the NSW coastal town of Thirroul, Anikka Lachlan loses her husband in a railway accident, Roy McKinnon clings to poetry as a light in the darkness of post-war depression, and Frank Draper is haunted by the lives he could not save as a doctor on the battlefields. The question is whether they can see a second chance at life and love.

Although the war is offstage, tragedy lingers in the protagonists, whose grief Hay portrays in credible detail. There is contrasting joy in the minutiae of domestic life, the innocence of Annika’s daughter, and the lush images of landscape and sea. The well-shaped story is enriched by literary references to DH Lawrence, books in the library where Anikka works, and the poetry Roy reads and writes. Hay’s style is unapologetically lyrical, yet always grounded in the earthiness of real life, and she does not shy away from tough, pungent and clever narrative choices.