Instead, what we get is a teenager’s fantasy, delivered in a plodding realism (wake up, eat breakfast, work out), that turns into a middle-aged man’s anxiety dream, complete with the pitfalls of heteronormative marriage and the attendant suspicions of entrapment and manipulation, not unlike the central dread of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012). It is the premise of the romantic comedy 50 First Dates (2004) but with the genders switched, and for this reason, efforts by the Partner Who Remembers to woo the Partner Who Forgets must surely be sinister rather than cute, because – see above, re: gender inversion.

How do we get from the adolescent fantasy to the domestic horror? This development hinges on the character of Julie. Robbie’s condition has left him a bit socially awkward, but that’s okay because he is a human sculpture. We know this because he reminds us about his ‘muscles’, aka ‘guns’, which he tries to modestly hide beneath his shirts after appraising his hot bod in the mirror. He also reminds us repeatedly that Julie, who delivers his groceries and says ‘hmph’ a lot, is both beautiful and slim. Miraculously, she is not threatened or deterred by Robbie’s oddball ways. She cheerfully becomes part of his life, even lending a hand with his weird domino project. She turns out to be highly capable to boot: she can sling a heavy leather tool bag over her pretty summer dress (a dress that inexplicably flutters upward) and problem-solve Robbie’s domino woes by constructing helpful platforms. Cool chick! She even teaches him how to ‘lubricate the screws by spitting on them’ and suggests they keep the ‘drill bits in [his drill] and the screw bits in [hers]’. Whoa!

Except, Julie is not a cool chick: she is in fact Robbie’s wife. Instead of being delighted by this revelation, Robbie gets suspicious. He now must decide whether he can trust the traces left by the past version of himself or those shown to him by his significant other. Who holds the key to his identity? Whom can he trust? This woman is a strategist. Or should that be conniving? She is funny. A humorous, capable (but thankfully not pants-wearing or drill-bit-wielding), beautiful wife. One who does nice things like pay for dinner, making him resent that she constantly has ‘all the power’. One who might have an issue or two of her own, making her a selfless caregiver only ninety-six per cent of the time. One who shows him a key to his past in the form of dancing. Red flags! (In case you missed it, this last effort is evidence of her plan to ‘sink her claws into [his] soul’.)

I should probably let you know that a puff quote by Graeme Simsion calls this novel ‘moving, intelligent and entertaining’. I think there is some message in it about honesty being more important than smarts, especially if you are a woman; about there still being romantic hope for masculine men who boast zero interpersonal skills; and about the importance of being a Man of Principle. Or, a chastening lesson that the bedrock of a good marriage is submitting to another, entrusting one’s identity to another (oh dear). At one stage, Robbie says he wants to be ‘free from the haphazard interventions of past lives – past wives’. If you like your books silly, this one is for you.

The Other Side of Beautiful by Kim Lock

HQ Fiction, $29.99 pb, 358 pp

A novel that bears greater resemblance to Simsion’s work is Kim Lock’s wholesome The Other Side of Beautiful. Like the clanking campervan at its heart, it starts out a little shaky, perhaps overburdened by some of the narrative challenges set up by its premise, but those flaws don’t detract from the fondness with which it is likely to be remembered.

Mercy suffers from an anxiety so severe she has not set foot outside her Adelaide home for two years. When that house burns down, and the living situation at her former husband’s proves too fraught, she takes to the road in a Daihatsu Hijet with only her sausage dog for company. There are some painstakingly plotted points that lead to her decision to make the Arafura Sea her destination, which, if a little fussy, accrete in a way that makes the choice feel plausible for someone living with debilitating fear.

By creating a succession of overbearing individuals who won’t take no, or silence, for an answer, Lock resolves a key problem: how to engineer encounters when the protagonist is someone who takes great pains to avoid all contact with strangers. At such times, the mechanics of the writing are laid bare, and the chit-chat can be tedious – even if the stakes are intolerably high for Mercy. But the nature of campervan travel, especially the way it facilitates repeat encounters, means that this dynamic dissipates after the first third of the novel.

By the time a romantic interest appears on the horizon, and revelations about Mercy’s past gather momentum, the motor is humming and all efforts to get into gear are forgotten. This is a recovery narrative meets road novel, sprinkled with affirmations about how to rebuild one’s life in the wake of loss, whether of a loved one, self-esteem, or security. Readers facing a turning point in life may be especially receptive to its feel-good designs.

The Rabbits by Sophie Overett

Vintage, $32.99 pb, 327 pp 

Sophie Overett’s The Rabbits is a lushly written family drama set in Brisbane during a summer that permeates everything. Following the disappearance of her son Charlie, the narrative homes in on art teacher Delia, on her angst-ridden school-leaver daughter, Olive, and on her youngest son, Benjamin. The story is full of heat and secrets, and it laments the way loved ones are forever at the limits of the knowable. It is only with peripheral characters (a neighbour, a workmate, a classmate) that Delia, Olive, and Benjamin can grapple with their feelings and attempt to express themselves, tasks that are almost impossible within the family unit.

In a magical realist touch, Charlie turns out to be not gone but invisible. He becomes something of a cipher, the absence everyone else orbits. His indiscernibility invites reflection on the pieces of ourselves we keep from view, and, in the context of the novel’s intergenerational trauma and Delia’s artwork, it shares commonalities with the workings of memory; not just memory’s omissions, but its insubstantiality, the many ways it falls short of reality. This is a highlight of the novel. Less interesting is the portrayal of a student–teacher relationship, which, with its seemingly uncomplicated view of the power differential, feels oddly out of step with the times.

Overett moulds words into parts of speech ordinarily foreign to them. Certain metaphors slowed this reader down, forcing a languid pace to match the slow burn of the narrative. While the surprise of words used figuratively is diminished upon repetition – examples include ‘mouth’ as a verb, as well as ‘yawn’ and ‘mothy’ – overall it signals the care and skill of a writer worth paying attention to. Of course, what may prove evocative for some readers may alienate others, e.g., ‘The sun is just starting to raise its head against the hills, fanning its golden locks across the sheets of the suburb.’

At one stage Overett writes, ‘The day is alive in a way it wasn’t earlier, a wild city thrumming inside a man-made one.’ It is the glimpses that Overett offers of this wild city – the subtropical heat working its power on characters throughout, the air and grass teeming with the sounds and sights of insects, reptiles, and birds – that are especially memorable.