Members enjoyed this engaging, humorous story about the broke dairy farmer Tom Murray who decides the bank won't have his house and burns it to the ground, but sadly manages to kill himself in the process.
His widow, Dawn, decides to conduct a funeral procession from their home in the fictional dairy town of Yardley to Carlton, Melbourne, for Tom's burial at a cemetery near other family members. Friends of Tom and Dawn offer to drive a milk wagon drawn by a horse for the purpose, and they are supported by the local policeman, who is also a friend and deals with the red tape of the journey.
Dawn's aim is to raise visibility of Australian dairy farmers' plight, in the face of supermarkets selling ultra cheap milk. The slow procession attracts interest from the local papers along the route through the dairy towns of Victoria. This interest increases severalfold to other media after a bank and a supermarket are torched and other farmers and people facing foreclosure, start to burn their own homes.
Helping to raise publicity for the event is Dawn's teenage daughter, Jenny, who establishes a Facebook site (#burn) and a crowd funding site, both of which attract interest and support from the wider community.
The story is narrated by her twin brother, Jack, a loveable 13 year old, who manages to overhear the conversations of the adults around him and to get into heated debates with his sister, about whether his father is in fact dead at all and who could be the possible arsonist in the party. Both children share a genetic medical condition which adds an interesting angle to the narrative.
The book is a warm hearted page turner which speaks of the strength of community in times of struggle. It remains true to the conversational idiom and attitudes of our farming communities. While the plot is ultimately not especially credible we were all happy to overlook this in the interests of a good yarn.
Our meeting spent a lot of time talking about the dairy sector and a number of issues raised in the book, with most members sympathetic to the farmer, which might be a good reason to recommend the book to others.
Who is Tim Slee?
Novelist Tim Slee was born in Papua New Guinea of Australian parents from sheep country in mid-north and far north South Australia. He worked as an Australian journalist for the Stock Journal in Adelaide before moving to Canberra and then Sydney where he worked for the Attorney General's Department. He has lived in Denmark, Canada and Australia. He currently works for a multinational pharmaceutical company in Denmark, however, he still calls Australia home.
Taking Tom Murray Home was his first novel and won the inaugural HarperCollins Banjo prize in 2018. Since then he has written seven more and a dozen thrillers under the name FX Holden.
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In the same way, we hope you will take away from our reviews some pearlers to share with your regular club.
