Exquisite writing and a devastating take on chronic illness, Mills’ depiction of the climate disaster that awaits Australia is a very dark read.
This is a slow-paced and unrelentingly heartbreaking story. It’s not one you can skim your way through late at night. You will need to focus to have any hope of following the story line. It’s worth taking the time to savour the beautiful prose, though.
The only (dark humour) laughs came with the townspeople’s attempts to make any sense of the corporate takeovers and restructures which prevent them from getting any clarity of their investments or liabilities in their once-thriving mining town.
Mills’ use of a ‘we’ point of view to tell parts of the story was fascinating. I’ve never come across it before. It was executed briliantly to show how small, isolated groups of people make collective decisions and are vulnerable to outside influences.
From the blurb:
One morning, the residents of a small coastal town somewhere in Australia wake to discover the sea has disappeared. One among them has been plagued by troubling visions of this cataclysm for years. Is she a prophet? Does she have a disorder that skews her perception of time? Or is she a gifted and compulsive liar?
Oscillating between the future and the past, Dyschronia is a novel that tantalises and dazzles, as one woman’s pescient nightmares become entangled with her town’s uncertain fate. Blazing with questions of consciousness, trust, and destiny, this is a wildly imaginative and extraordinary novel from award-winning author Jennifer Mills.
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