There is much to draw on in a gendered reading of Cole’s second novel. In a landscape of creeks and camphor trees, Mema’s contact with water, plants, and animals is daily and intimate, while human interaction is limited to her mother, her sister, and one close friend, the wild and disturbed Anja. Fathers and brothers are a painful absence in Mema’s family, and a destructive presence in Anja’s. Yet it is through her desire that Mema – named after the goddess Artemis – begins to unravel ‘the knowns and unknowns’ of her heart.

Cole explores themes of decay and renewal with grace and insight. From Bessie the cow on the first page to kingfishers in flight on the last, Cole populates the book with animals as metaphors, as narrative triggers, and as individualised characters. Similarly, characters such as Anja and baby Lila are ‘like an animal’.

Mema’s voice is at once gentle and bold – like a child who matter-of-factly states a confronting truth – and calls to mind Randolph Stow’s assertion that ‘country children know more than they know’. There is honesty, too, in Mema’s sexuality – not glossed or imitative but raw and experiential. Cole immerses the reader in an experience of nature so attentively corporal that it is spiritual. Deeper Water is a compelling examination of our relationship with nature.