I remember the day like yesterday. I was in Hereford, shopping with my cousin who had come to stay, and my son, who was then about three years old. I remember it because it was the day my son went missing. Don’t worry, it wasn’t for long, although ten minutes felt like a lifetime that day. He was found safe and sound, having wandered off to watch a clown who was street entertaining. My son was oblivious to my pain as he sat crossed-legged, with other children, in the front row, laughing. The incident is etched into my memory. What must it be like, then, for those parents whose children go missing and never come back? My heart goes out to them.


Dirt Town, the author’s debut novel, tells the story of Esther Bianchi, a little girl who doesn’t come home from school one day. Or rather, it tells the story of what happens to the town when Esther doesn’t come home from school, as the police investigation into her disappearance casts suspicion on both friends and family and exposes the deep cracks running through the community. Her mother’s anguish is palpable and the secrets which are revealed only serve to compound it. Mud sticks as they say, and when people are accused, guilty or not, nothing is ever the same, especially in a small place like Durton, (nicknamed Dirt Town) a backwater in New South Wales, Australia. Esther’s friends, Ronnie and Lewis, cannot believe she is never coming back and without their keystone, their relationship changes, too.

Detective Sarah Michaels, who has her own demons to fight, leads the investigation and with knowledge of domestic and family violence from working in child protection, her experiences shape her views and expectations. Her investigation leads her in various directions and ultimately shatters the closed ranks of the men in the town. It also shatters the women who love and protect them.

Told from the different perspectives of characters involved, the reader learns that the lives of the small population are naturally intertwined, with relationships of different sorts, dating back not just years but also, occasionally, generations.

Scrivenor has a talent for creating realistic, rounded characters whose traits are only slowly revealed, giving them greater depth as the layers are peeled back. The reader comes to understand why they are as they are. Esther’s mother, Constance, is considered a newcomer, having moved there at the insistence of her husband, Steve, a handsome man of Italian roots. Little by little, however, we realise that v He is not the only one.

As a father, Clint is as rotten as they come and there are others like him – men who want to control their wives and expect their children to do as they are told – reasonable or not. Happy families, it seems, are just for show. The town has its own character – it is the sum of its inhabitants, and not always agreeable. This place has all the ingredients but seems unable to make a cake. When Scrivenor writes “Everything is thin and made of cardboard” I am reminded of Imtiaz Dharker’s unusual poem Tissue, which explores the fragility of life as she examines the importance on our lives, of paper in all its forms. Durton is fragile.

Everyone in Durton has their secrets, and the investigation into Esther’s disappearance will expose them all. The pain of keeping secrets and the effect both on individuals and on outcomes, is not to be underestimated. This close-knit community is tied up not only by its secrets but also by those things which everybody knows and nobody talks about, sometimes resulting in betrayal. Lewis is a boy with secrets of his own and they mean he cannot reveal what he saw that fateful day when Esther did not come home. Mistakes, too, play a part. Genuine mistakes, but with real consequences.

There is an exploration of sexuality in both old and young, a little over-egged in places, I felt, but offering an interesting twist at times and an explanation for some of the responses and reactions we observe.

There are answers by the end, certainly, with no loose ends left untied but there is not just one outcome and most of the protagonists are affected in some way. The relationships are real, the people exist and it feels like they are not just on the page. ‘We’, when finally revealed, makes a poignant and heartfelt narrator. Like a Greek chorus, the town’s children, the collective “we” whose voices, you realise, are absent from grown-up conversations, provide insights with an unbiased and sensitive clarity; eyes and ears which often go unnoticed but should never be ignored.