After Paulina is brutally murdered, Judy must not only learn to live with the sheer ‘senselessness’ of her death but also acknowledge the parallels between the two women’s lives. Judy discovers that her youthful missteps anticipated and perhaps set in train ­the ones made by her daughter decades later.

If the above events sound familiar, perhaps they should. The Newcomer was apparently ‘inspired by a real-life murder on Norfolk Island’. Presumably this was the 2002 killing of Janelle Patton. The fictitious Paulina’s death happens at around the same time as the real-life Patton’s.

More broadly, the novel could be read as a commentary on the way in which the murders of women who do not fit a certain, saintly stereotype are not mourned in quite the same way. As the book’s tagline puts it: ‘There’s no such thing as a perfect victim.’

That tagline also signals the novel’s feminist politics. Woollett convincingly and devastatingly evokes the everyday misogyny of the world her characters inhabit. This is a world in which even apparently friendly exchanges are laced with an acrid antipathy towards women and girls, one in which women are blamed for the male violence that they’re subject to. After Paulina is beaten by a sexual partner, the man’s wife remarks: ‘You won’t be pretty for a while, but that’s alright. Pretty’s what got you here in the first place.’ The book provides a shrewd critique of male sexual entitlement and its consequences, and it’s one that doesn’t seem preachy or tendentious. Politics and fiction haven’t always been an easy combination, but they are here.

The Newcomer unfolds like a mystery, with the reader kept guessing. That speculation will likely not concern the killer’s identity. This is, to some extent, unimportant; long before her actual execution, Paulina’s soul was being poisoned by the brutish blokes who abused her. Rather, readers are left guessing about Paulina herself. Who was she as a person and why did she become so troubled? Why did she remain on Fairfolk Island after discovering the darkness that lay beneath the tropical aesthetics? Fairfolk is insular and unwelcoming, especially to ‘mainies’ (those who hail from mainland Australia) and sexually active women. Paulina’s insistence that she will remain on the island because ‘I’ve got blood here’ takes on a tragic resonance in light of her fate.

Throughout the novel, Woollett provides a sensitive and refreshingly unjudgmental insight into the lives of her two female protagonists. The author skilfully invokes a mother–daughter bond that is unshaken by death, and that continues to grow after Paulina’s passing, as Judy learns about the previously unnoted similarities between herself and her child. These include a tendency to engage in relationships with married men; Paulina’s father, who died before the events of the novel, was one such man. His ex-wife still blames Judy for her long-ago marriage breakdown, as becomes evident in one powerfully understated moment.

Just as impressively sketched is the relationship between Judy and Jesse, a younger Fairfolk Island resident and former object of Paulina’s affection. This relationship is played out in fleeting glances and long-distance phone calls. Their attraction merges seamlessly with, and perhaps provides an outlet for, the grief that each feels over Paulina’s death. The sensitive Jesse provides an alternative to the brutish, unreconstructed masculinity on show throughout the text.

Woollett’s eye for dialogue and character development is impeccable. Even minor characters (such as Judy’s love interest, who appears towards the end) are well rounded and credible.

Some moments don’t hit quite the right note. These include the sex scenes, which in fairness have been the bugbears of even the most talented authors. The leery descriptions and the odd juvenile turn of phrase (the word ‘stiffy’ is one example) are more redolent of a tawdry porno than a somber, nuanced novel. These details are particularly confusing when one considers that the sex is narrated from Paulina’s point of view, and not her male consorts.

Perhaps Woollett is suggesting how her protagonist has internalised the immature sexual scripts dictated by men? The lines that Paulina utters (‘Oh, babe … you’re so good!’) seem clichéd and forced, more likely designed to assuage male egos than to express genuine ecstasy. Yet, the reasons for such passages remain opaque; the author might have been trying to provide a commentary on heterosexual male-defined eroticism, but comes perilously close to indulging in it.

Overall, The Newcomer is a bleak and beautifully written tome that is tailor-made for the #MeToo era. Woollett’s commentary on misogyny and male sexual mores is timely given the current exposes of sexual abuse in Australian culture. Her characters and their interactions seem heartbreakingly real.