I found this hard to put down; it was a compulsive read. From a boy's perspective. Marty keeps having flashbacks and gradually realizes that terrible things happened in his past. He ends up almost committing suicide and ends up in hospital. ( )

The shadow of the title is a dark cloud from the past which is barely remembered by Marty, but still haunting. Now, as he grows to be a brooding youth, flashes of this memory - or nightmare - are returning with ever increasing clarity. Heffernan draws us closer to this at first unlikable character as we learn what his life has been and might become. I found this quite a touching family story to look back upon, in spite of some of the horrors that are revealed.

Beautifully drawn characters, especially Marty, give depth to this story. He and younger brother Jack are left mostly to their own devices with their father often away working, shooting roos. It is a rough and ready life but increasingly Marty's brooding acceptance of his lot is shaken by shadows from the past. He cannot tell what is memory, dream or nightmare. At school a new girl befriends him and he is surprised by this friendship with Nariah who is beautiful and outgoing in spite of pressures on her and her family as refugees from Iran. Marty gets pleasure from helping her father with his treasured garden. He loses himself only in tending his trees and playing with his dog, Gwabagar, known as Marty's shadow. But the other shadows are beginning to crush Marty's weathered spirit and threaten his mental health . Something has to give. Some shocking scenes in this realistic and affecting story. ( )

Marty knows something is not right. There is something in his past that has left a shadow over his life. His nightmares, flashbacks and erratic behavior leave him fearful and confused. He wants to know what happened, just as much as he fears what that knowledge could mean.

This novel is difficult to read – not the prose though, which is unrelenting in it’s stark unveiling of Marty’s psyche – but in the sheer weight of the sorrows, traumas, fears and confrontations that Marty exists under. There’s the Event in his past, his alcoholic mother, abusive father, racial tensions in the town, cruel teachers, possible girlfriend, bullying at school, his pet dog, and his uncomfortable relationship with his brother. The way he deals with all this is shadowed by the Event in the past, which is slowly revealed in a series of Post Traumatic Stress induced flashbacks.

There’s brutal realism in this story; Heffernan takes Marty to the very edge of life, destroying everything Marty has ever clung to, leaving only a shadow behind. I found the ambiguity of the ending quite frightening – is his father, to continue to protect the secret from the past, actively working to ensure that Marty remains in his traumatized state? To me, that can be the only possible reason for the gift they take him…

A disturbing, engrossing read, that has left me thinking on its themes. And it’s left me wanting to read Marty’s brother’s story now, wanting to know his experience of his family, his town, his brother. ( )

This one crept up me. It's a dark little tale, written in sinuous prose and with great feel for the people and places therein. John's experience writing picture books shows through: he doesn't waste a word. The novel is a portrait of an isolated teenager in an isolated town. There are unknown events, or at least, unresolved and hidden things from his past that haunt Marty's dreams and his days. An over-bearing father doesn't help him through much, nor a bullying crowd at school. But Marty is no sook, he can at least physically look after himself. But it's the tricks and torments of the mind that this novel is chiefly concerned with and in that, Heffernan has written a novel of great compassion and precision. ( )