The Mother (2006)

Author	Brett McBean
Publisher	Lothian Books
Length	396 pages
Genre	Revenge
Blurb	A powerful psychological thriller
Country

Talk us through it

A Woman's daughter is brutally murdered while hitch hiking on the Hume highway to Sydney and her body is dumped near Lake Mokoan. The Woman embarks on a journey of revenge hoping to find her daughter's killer and bring him/her to summary justice. Assuming a number of different identities the woman hitch hikes up and down the Hume on her own personal descent into darkness.

Meeting predators, drifters, vampire hunters, and sociopaths the Woman waits for the one identifying mark she knows will point out the killer. Can she find her target before the rigours of the road take too much toll? End of day will she care?

Ready to thumb a lift into Brett McBean's second novel?

Review

For his second novel Brett McBean goes with an episodic almost short story form that surprises since the majority of the book's runtime shy's away from presenting developments from the major character's point of view. We witness changes to "the mother" from the thoughts of other characters who she hitches rides from during the course of the novel. Even stranger, from a traditional horror novel construction, the antagonist, the major course for the events of the novel, is never introduction. So we have a revenge driven novel that deviates away from being presented in any recognisable horror narrative structure. Further confounding our expectations the expected shot to the head, the apparent whole scene the novel is driving toward never eventuates causing the reader to rethink their perception of what McBean is trying to achieve during the novel. With The Mother the Author approaches the revenge novel in a surprisingly different and ultimately more satisfying fashion than you would expect.

McBean sets up the motivation for the mother with simple broad strokes and leaves it to the reader's imagination to fill in the details. The darker your imagination the more harsh this motivation will become. The Author never states exactly what happened to "the Mother's" daughter Rebecca in gruesome detail but drops enough information to have those with vivid imaginations filling in the worse possible options. It's to the writer's credit that you never question what happened to Rebecca, you simply accept the version "the Mother" presents, but after finishing the novel I was left wondering if there wasn't a darker interpretation available. McBean here reminds me of New Zealand writer Alan Duff, both writers have the ability to drop venom onto the page along with the ink. You will need to read right to the end of the novel in order to get how dark the highway is that the Author is driving us along. Coincidentally, and because that was another word I have always wanted to use in a review, if you are one of those horrible readers who can't help themselves and must read the final page or so during the novel, then it's not going to help you. McBean ensures the final pages have little meaning if you haven't read the rest of the novel.

The majority of The Mother focuses on various drivers and their perception of the descent our lead character is going through. At the start of the book, when we all think we are going to get a straight forward revenge novel, the titular character is good looking but hardening up on the realities of her situation. McBean captures this hardening aspect via a few scenes and some background dialogue, the five businessmen etc. By novel's end she is almost zombie like, doesn't smell all that good, and has ceased to be an entirely recognisable human being. The Mother has become so obsessed by her search that all humanity is being stripped from her. A core understanding of The Mother therefore must revolve around a descent into madness, Conrad's journey into darkness, and by heck I'm going to tilt at a windmill here and mention Hamlet. As stated Brett McBean is after far darker fruit than your standard horror novel and has produced a gem of a book that surprises in it's complexity and strong narrative structure.

Where McBean's novel is going to sink or swim is with his handling of secondary characters, something a Writer like Stephen King is exceedingly strong at doing by the way. Thankfully Brett McBean nails this aspect of the novel and presents a range of characters who will invoke a range of responses. You will like some characters, be enraged by others, and will be really hoping the Author delivers a gruesome demise for a couple of them. Once again, as in his first novel The Last Motel, no character is left hanging by page last and even seemingly minor characters will be resolved in terms of plot structure or in some cases plot device. Yes at one stage you will be wondering what happened to a certain character, the chapter finishes abruptly, McBean for one of the few times in the novel revisits a character and in so doing shows the Mother has become more vicious and focused to the detriment of others.

As normal McBean has a pretty harsh view of the human race. His novel may be populated with the odd decent person trying to help their fellow travellers, but far out numbering the white hat brigade are the usual predators and social outcasts we would expect to find in a tale of the macabre by the Author. Brett McBean really has picked up the blood soaked banner of Richard Laymon and is happily parading it down the main street of Melbourne. I've got a nasty suspicion Dying Breed would have been a much stronger movie if McBean had been let loose on developing the denizens of a certain small village in the Tasmanian bush. Wonder if Brett McBean's neighbours know who they are living next to?

McBean continues with his easy accessible style that on the surface appears simplistic but which harbours dark depths waiting for the unwary. You can read The Mother without delving into the intricacies of the novel, but I have a sneaking suspicion the narrative will stay with you and like a loose tooth will continue to nag at you till you open the pages for a second read. It's one of those books, there are monsters below the surface dimly viewed, but they keep pulling the eye downward. You may pick up the book for a late night chill, but you will be left with a hankering to explore it more. Great achievement by the Author if you ask me, which of course you didn't.

I had a lot of fun with The Mother and enjoyed the episodic layout of the novel. McBean never takes his book in the direction you think it will be going in, hell I was thumbing a ride there with twenty pages to go, but end of day delivers something far more fascinating. A book that gives to the reader far more than they initially put into it. Is this art then? If you subscribe to Stephen King's definition circa Danse Macabre then hell yes! This review is slightly late mainly because I had to re-read parts of The Mother with the revelations provided late in the novel. McBean surprises here, he can not only write with a blood soaked pen, but can add hidden depths to a deceptively simple structure.

The Mother was published by the ill fated Lothian Books and hence is out of print. However the good news is that copies are still very much available if you are prepared to seek them out. First port of call would probably be Border Books, I believe the Pitt Street Mall store in Sydney has a copy or two, failing that either amazon.com or ebay.com.au, and if still needing your McBean fix then drop us a line and we'll hook you up via one of a number of excellent bookstores.

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