Barren Cape by Michelle Prak

Michelle Prak’s second novel Barren Cape takes on a very familiar modern story. Young people in Australia (in this case Adelaide) who have been priced out of the rental market and have become effectively homeless. Prak builds around this a number of other hot button issues – including domestic violence, stalking and teens behaving badly – to build her premise into a thriller.

The narrative of Barren Cape is built around three characters. The first two Mac (Mackenzie) and Erica were flatmates until they were evicted and their flat became a holiday rental. Erica moves home but Mac finds that she cannot live with her mother and ends up couch surfing with friends. When that gets tired, she finds an abandoned, half built resort down the coast, breaks in and sets up in one of the empty rooms. This is where she encounters Brex, a teenager who also cannot go home because her mother’s boyfriend is back in the picture. But Brex and her two friends have more secrets than that, secrets that are keen to keep hidden. When Erica spills the secret of Mac’s find to her crush and he brings his two friends out to the resort, the situation quickly spirals out of control.

All of the characters feel genuine, but that also means that none of them are particularly likeable. Prak does a good job of building up the tension, particularly placing the action mainly from Mac’s point of view. Early on Erica feels like a character just brought in to compare with Mac’s life and make it harder but Erica does come into her own with a bit of a redemption arc in the last third of the book. Brex too has a familiar backstory for teenagers sleeping rough, although her two friends, who have plenty of influence on the action, are much less developed.

The abandoned, half-built resort with its seaweedy beach, particularly at night is both an inviting and creepy setting for the action. But there are a number of conveniences in the plot to drive the tension, particularly those involving Brex and her friends and their situation. And some of the elements that are developed earlier in the novel seem to peter out or are forgotten. And while some aspects of the final confrontations don’t quite make sense, they are cleared up in an ending that unravels a number of twists.

Barren Cape does generate some tension and has some things to say about modern Australia. But its thrills are a little contrived and the whole package does not quite live up to its initial promise.

Barren Cape by Michelle Prak

6

6.0/10