It is hard to believe that Deeper Water is only Jessie Cole’s second novel. Her prose is assured and graceful as she expands the ripples of a stranger’s arrival ever wider across a remote New South Wales community. Cole explores issues of family, identity and environment in a story that swells slowly but surely towards overflowing its banks.
Mema’s family have always been on the outskirts, both physically and emotionally. She now lives alone with her mother, with brothers and fathers conspicuously absent. The two women exist in a simple, silent routine, carrying out farmyard duties on their property, until a car runs off a bridge in a flood. Mema is forced to expand her horizons beyond her innocent, rustic lifestyle. We develop an intimate understanding of this naïve, gentle and caring individual who discovers a depth of feeling within herself that she never thought possible.
This is a novel of truth, power and beauty, soaked through with a lush sense of a place that is truly Cole’s own. It is the best Australian book I’ve read this year; sensual, evocative and broad in scope, it is definitely one to lose yourself in.