The Restorer

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Description

Longlisted for the 2018 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Michael Sala's The Restorer is an explosive and powerful story one troubled family's attempts to rebuild their broken lives. After a year apart, Maryanne returns to her husband, Roy, bringing their eight-year-old son Daniel and his teenage sister Freya with her. The family move from Sydney to Newcastle, where Roy has bought a derelict house on the coast. As Roy painstakingly patches the holes in the floorboards and plasters over cracks in the walls, Maryanne believes, for a while, that they can rebuild a life together. But Freya doesn't want a fresh start-she just wants out-and Daniel drifts around the sprawling, run-down house in a dream, infuriating his father, who soon forgets the promises he has made. Some cracks can never be smoothed over, and tension grows between Roy and Maryanne until their uneasy peace is ruptured-with devastating consequences.

Reviews

In this remarkable novel, Michael Sala builds tension masterfully until an explosive final actThis is powerful and poetic fiction that showcases a writer at the height of his powers. * Judges Report, Victorian Premiers Literary Awards, 2018 *
'Michael Sala is a sensitive, perceptive observer of human relationships and I have long admired his work. The Restorer is a beautifully written novel about growing up, starting againand how the riptide of personal history can pull us further and further from safety, no matter how hard we fight. -- Charlotte Wood

There is so much to praise about this book. Michael Salas prose is clear and unadorned, the setting exquisitely rendered, but it is his charactersall of them flawed and complex and deeply, deeply humanwho will stay with me for a very long time. I would defy anyone to read this story and remain unmoved. The Restorer is an incredibly powerful novel and, I believe, an important one.

-- Hannah Kent
A wise and timely novel that builds and breaks like a summer stormjust as beautiful, just as brutal. * Fiona McFarlane *
This is powerful, poetic, extraordinary fictionSala never falters. * Australian *
UnputdownableSala creates an atmosphere of simmering tension with an undercurrent of unpredictability that seeps into every exchange. [He] is a brilliant writer. * Saturday Paper *
Michael Sala taps into the tension and fear of the times to help build the moodThe cracks are widening long before the earth moves in this novel of a family locked into patterns of violence. * Australian Womens Weekly *

Author Bio

Michael Sala was born in the Netherlands in 1975 to a Greek father and a Dutch mother, and first came to Australia in the 1980s. He lives in Newcastle. His critically acclaimed debut, The Last Thread, won the 2013 NSW Premier's Award for New Writing and was the regional winner (Pacific) of the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize.