The Voices - Softcover

"Elderkin's dialog effortlessly conjures intricate characters and settings, highlighting the dangerous confrontations between cultures in the outback." -Purdence Peiffer, Library Journal "Certainly brilliant. . . . Beautifully written, melancholy, fey, angry and utterly absorbing. . . . Part fable, part coming-of-age story." -Cressida Connolly, The Daily Telegraph (UK) "As a writer she is the real thing, and the novel, tender, sensual and genuinely original. . . . Evidence of great talent." -Maggie Gee, The London Times (UK) "Susan Elderkin's characteristically dazzling techniques are on display in all their virtuosity and freakish inventiveness. . . . She is without equal." -The Independent (UK)

A story of incantatory beauty set in the wilds of Australia, Susan Elderkin's second novel The Voices has earned her the distinction from Granta as one of the Best Young British Writers Under 40. In the remote, blood red dust of the Australian bush, thirteen-year-old Billy Saint turns to the stark landscape and mesmerizing spirits of the native Aborigines for the companionship he lacks at home. When he is befriended by Maisie, an enigmatic Aboriginal girl who has sung him up, he slowly comes to realize that he is meddling with powers far beyond his control. Ten years later, Billy lies in a hospital bed, recovering from gruesome wounds of mysterious origin. Shifting between his hospital stay and the childhood that led him there, The Voices unfolds into a haunting exploration of the relationship between a white man, the land he loves, and the native spirits of the country struggling to be heard before they are lost forever.