THE INDIAN GIVER

In Parker’s debut novel, a young Australian woman grows up in a volatile home and is abandoned by her parents when tragedy strikes.

Lara Baxter grows up in Perth, Australia, in the 1950s and ’60s, fearful of her father, Greg, who would go missing for weeks on end only to reappear drunken and violent. In order to find solace from the tumult of her home life, she devotes herself to her friends and parlays her creative talent into work as a commercial artist. However, when she’s 20 years old, her life is turned upside down; Bruce Chillingham, a man she’d just started dating, rapes her, and when she confronts him later with news of her pregnancy, he indignantly denies what happened. Lara’s mother doesn’t believe her, either, and casts her out of her life. Lost in despair, Lara even contemplates suicide: “I had an…unhappy home and no money at all saved. I was emotionally spent and had no future in sight.” She leaves home to live with a friend’s relative, then goes to a parochial home for pregnant women. After she finally delivers a baby boy, however, the attending doctor immediately and unlawfully takes the child away from her, and she does everything in her power to reunite with her offspring. Parker lucidly and sensitively depicts Lara’s painful, lonesome plight, and she intelligently shines a light on the extraordinarily difficult circumstances of women who find themselves with child but without emotional or financial support. However, the prose frequently meanders and often reads like a personal diary written in intimate, confessional tones but without literary style. Ultimately, the power of the plot is inarguable, and the protagonist’s situation is a poignant one. However, the banality of the writing keeps it from being a gripping read.

An emotionally unflinching work that’s hampered by bland prose.