Based on a real life event: in 1797 , the ship The Sydney Cove, which was wrecked in the (then unexplored) Bass Strait. Just a few of its passengers make the 600 mile walk to Sydney- through unexplored terrain full of native inhabitants...
The author adds a murderous twist to that adventure.
As the two white survivors and their young Bengali servant are nursed back to health, the officials in New South Wales try to get to the truth of what really happened.
Quite compulsive reading. ( )

I've been trying to think of somebody else that could write books about abalone fishing quotas, cricket, asylum seekers and now early white Australian settlement, convicts, rum runners and shipwrecks and make them all equally compelling, memorable, and ... crime fiction.

Jock Serong is one of those writers whose books induce a spot of awkward happy dancing when they arrive - you're guaranteed of something different and unusual after all. Whilst each of the settings, and approaches have varied, at the core of Serong's books is a tale of people being people. Good, bad, indifferent, inspired, capable, incompetent, awful, ordinary, predictable and utterly unpredictable.

In the case of PRESERVATION we have a fictional reworking of a true story - the attempt by seventeen shipwreck survivors to walk from the Victorian coast, east to Sydney. There was a diary of their exploits that survived, along with the three of the original sailors, and Serong has used the historical records of the time and the diary to weave a dark and mysterious tale of murder, treachery and theft. There are multiple threads to PRESERVATION though. The story of the sailor's survival, trek and the importance (and value) of the cargo the ship carried, is interwoven with a tale of the Indigenous people of the various areas, and how they initially helped, then attacked, the sailors. This provides a bigger picture of the causes and outcomes of tension between the locals and white settlers, including the poor choices of many white settlers in rejecting any local people's expertise and experience in the landscape. The other ongoing thread is the story of the white settlement of Sydney itself, seen mostly through the eyes of Lieutenant Joshua Grayling and his wife Charlotte. Grayling is tasked with discovering the truth of the shipwreck and trek as accounts vary, and his, and Charlotte's interaction with all the shipwreck survivors and the local aboriginal people is nuanced, sympathetic and complicated.

The Grayling characters are one of those portrayals that we need to remind us that it isn't true to say that all early white settlers behaved badly - therefore it's okay to dismiss the worst as "normalised". They are a reflection of many people that have recently been written about who upheld the rule of law, regardless of skin colour or social background, that stood for fairness and understanding.

At the heart of PRESERVATION is a crime story though - it's a story about murder, identity theft, ill-gotten gains and greed. It's also a story of survival, intrepidness and standing up to authority on matters of principle. It's the sort of novel that will appeal to both pure crime fiction fans and historical novel readers alike and another perfect example of the sort of yarn that Jock Serong specialises in. I cannot wait to see where he takes us next.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/preservation-jock-serong-1 ( )

Told by 5 main narrators, with the reader often having to determine the identity of the narrator through the content, and written as part of a PhD in Creative Writing, Jock Serong brings to life a little known episode in the early history of the colony of New South Wales.

The Sydney Cove has come from India via a route that takes her around the western most tip of the continent, down the western side of Van Diemen's Land, and then up the eastern coast of the island, only to be wrecked in what would become known as Bass Strait. The boat has a valuable cargo of rum and tea which are stored on Preservation Island when the crew takes to the long boat only to be wrecked again on the southern coast of New South Wales. (A lovely set of maps has been provided to orientate the reader)

Those from the wrecked long boat, 17 of them, begin the walk to Sydney Harbour, over 500 miles to the north, but only 3 arrive. One of the Europeans keeps a journal but it is obvious from the re-telling of the tale once they reach Sydney Harbour that each of the survivors has seen the events very differently.

An interesting story, graphically told. ( )

Preservation was an impulse choice: I saw it at the library and I’d enjoyed Jock Serong’s On the Java Ridge (which BTW has won some awards since I read it).

Preservation is quite different in that it’s historical fiction set in colonial Sydney, and it only obliquely tackles the problem of evil in the present day. It’s basically a detective story but it’s absorbing reading because it’s a howdunit and a whydunit rather than a whodunit…

The novel is derived from the true story of shipwreck of the Sydney Cove. This is the blurb:

On a beach not far from the isolated settlement of Sydney in 1797, a fishing boat picks up three shipwreck survivors, distressed and terribly injured. They have walked hundreds of miles across a landscape whose features—and inhabitants—they have no way of comprehending. They have lost fourteen companions along the way. Their accounts of the ordeal are evasive.

It is Lieutenant Joshua Grayling’s task to investigate the story. He comes to realise that those fourteen deaths were contrived by one calculating mind and, as the full horror of the men’s journey emerges, he begins to wonder whether the ruthless killer poses a danger to his own family.

The ship which set sail from Calcutta in British India was carrying rum, which was then the currency in the fledgling settlement of Sydney. Among the Sydney Cove’s passengers is a man soon revealed to be a psychopath called Figge; a naïve entrepreneur called Clark trying to beat the East India Company at its own game; and Srinivas, a Lascar learning the ropes of service from his father who is the unacknowledged leader of the Lascar crew. The narrative gives voice to all three, and also to Lt. Grayling and his wife Charlotte, who discovers that Srinivas speaks English and has witnessed incriminating conversations between Clark and Figge as to the fate of the fourteen companions. These narratives with their competing versions of the truth build to a climax.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/12/03/preservation-by-jock-serong/ ( )