Nerida Newton can write impressive prose: ‘Comfortable words. Stories worn and traded like old coats.’ There is something worn about this story – but not tired; worn in a way that mostly suggests the humps, bumps and peculiarities of her characters, worn in a way that as Australians, we have learnt from our varied experiences with the landscape. The depiction of landscape is Newton’s strength. This is where that familiarity comes from – the ongoing preoccupation in Australian literature with writing landscape, considering its significance, posing it as central to the definition of who we are as a people. Newton’s exploration of Byron Bay, her excavation of the layers of the town’s past and its effect on the inhabitants is thoughtfully done. This is history tracked and told through the ‘ordinary’ story of lived experience: the development of children, the making of men and women.

At times (as when Flinch forgets that he can’t breathe under water), you forget you are reading and become engulfed in Newton’s prose. But there are also times when you become overly aware of Newton writing; when the signposts are laboured and self-conscious. Despite these niggles, Newton writes an engaging cultural history of place and people. Death of a Whaler is a thoughtful and sensitive read.