Swan Bay by Rod Jones

I personally met Roday Jones two decades ago when he was searching for some material regarding Mediterranean Women. He stayed in our area for 12 days and later Rod would have been published in the most read Australian newsmagazine The Age a piece about his visit. Many things changed from that visit: Irene died, she was the official guide of Rod, during that 12 days and they spent wagons of time together; Assunta and Ubaldo closed the bar, keeping opened only the tabaccheria for the affectionated fans of cigarettes, Chicco became a pizzaiolo, Nicola works in a  factory, Chicca is married, Don Marino died. Ambulants diminished in numbers: the bakery store of the town interrupted the service of bringing bread in rural areas; Mileno the fruit-veggie ambulant vendor, one of the most serious person I have ever met on the face of this Earth went in pension dying too soon.

The only vendor passing every week remains Federico, the son of Remo, dead now, with its  articles for the home. People in the area diminished pretty strongly.  

I was so surprised when I found this book by Rod Jones, Swan Bay

A Novel of Destiny, Desire, Death in the emporium of the ladies of Books for Dogs.

I found that this book after this period of lockdown and this "normality" was a beauty sign.

I brought home last saturday for the cheap price of one euro each, several books, eight in total, for helping the ladies and their charity.

It's a strong book this one written by Rod. I have read his first book Julia Paradise. I asked for that one because Rod catched me through a website of correspondence but we were at the beginning of the internet and I wanted to be assured that this man was seriously a writer.

I still hadn't read this one. His novels are populated by complicated ladies, strange relationships.

Swan Bay is the perfect place chosen by a lot of creatives in Australia; musicians, movie-makers, writers, reporters, when one day the arrival of a lady called Virgil in a house still "abandoned". Apparently she is alone, she spends her time always alone; she loves to sing piano, reading, smoking marijuana;  she has a couple of friends who spend with her some time once per weekand firstly she is sick.

The writer starts a friendship with her, and he will be violently introduced in her world: a world populated by illness, hospitals, seizures, failures, betrayel, death; she had a pregnancy but she lost the baby; her companion left her for another girl.

The book ends with the departure of Virgil.

The book is dense of considerations, in particular complications created by relationships,  that monogamy spasmodically searched by men but, simply, not existing. That's why there are betrayals, sufferances, new people in grade to re-generate a lost soul passing through the sufferance of the betrayed one.

Pretty short book, 162 pages, it seems more long because of the sufferance emanating through the book by  the various characters.

Highly recommended.

Anna Maria Polidori