TREE PALACE

A look at the hardscrabble lives of transients in rural Australia affirms the power of family.

A group of “trants,” or transients, roams the countryside and squats at an abandoned house, left to decay and seemingly unlivable. Sherborne presents a bleak landscape where daily needs are met by what is found and through negotiations with the establishment in town. Shane and his brother, Midge, strip abandoned estates of hardware, doors and woodwork to trade on the black market to support their motley “family.” Moira holds the group together. Her aimless son, Rory, looks up to Shane and wants to enter the trade. Zara, her daughter, has just given birth to a son at the age of 15. There is a poignant, comic, sad moment when the police come to question them about fires being started in the countryside. When asked to identify themselves, all five characters give different last names. “ ‘I’m Midge. Shane’s brother.’ ‘Midge Whittaker?’ ‘No, Flynn. Half brother.’ ” They all live in hiding, the police and the social structure of Barleyville predisposed to demonize their lifestyle. On one level, the novel is a social commentary, but at its core, it's a look, at times tender, at family interactions. The Tree Palace is named when Shane, Midge and Rory hoist a chandelier into a tree at their patchwork home, brought back from one of their “thieving” trips at a particularly elegant, abandoned mansion. There is a moment of delight, the group as one, content. “As night fell, no one disturbed the crystal hush by speaking.”

Sherborne presents moments of great emotion and bravely explores a world that most of us would be comfortable leaving alone. But the novel is directionless and never generates enough momentum to readily pull us along.