Ellie Marney’s new novel takes the grass-roots feeling of a tight-knit country town, and throws in an explosive mixture of cult ideologies, peer pressure and moral dilemmas. Set in a small town in rural Victoria, White Night tells the story of a status quo shaken by one secretive community, and a boy and a girl who challenge the beliefs of both worlds.
The novel is quintessentially Australian: from the familiar tone of the dialogue to the vividly described settings, Marney expertly crafts a rich world for her characters so that their story takes on a life outside of the book. The way that the natural oasis of Eden is described transports the reader into the scene, delighting all of the senses.
While the story’s main thread revolves around the clashing of mainstream society and an environmental cult, minor plotlines are abundant. When not learning about the obscure community of Eden, the protagonist Bo is dealing with family secrets, doubt about his future, drama with his friends, and the organising of a fateful fundraiser. It can be easy to get lost in these subplots and forget that there’s a focal point to this story.
What begins as a feel-good rural story takes a turn darker than one would expect. No one chooses to write about polarising subject matter like cults and off-the-grid societies without having some kind of strong opinion, but while White Night attempts to show both sides of Eden in the beginning, Marney’s views come across too strongly and suddenly.
Whether communities like Eden are “good” or “bad” is kept purposefully vague for a long time, so long that it seems like Marney is letting the readers make up their own minds. But then the tone of the story takes a sharp twist, as if Marney is afraid her stance isn’t coming across. White Night wouldn’t be a story without Marney pushing Eden one way or the other, but it just needed more time to make the twist believable.
Full of ethical dilemmas and the power of community, White Night is a treasure trove of secrets and much more than it appears.
The Graveyard Book, published in 2008, is a work of Neil Gaiman’s that instantly appeals to readers of the macabre and strange. The novel follows Nobody ‘Bod’ Owens through his experiences of living with a cohort of ghouls and ghosts within a cemetery. The Graveyard Book chronicles his life throughout the graveyard and the places …
Margot McGovern’s Neverland is a complex look into mental health through the lens of a mythical world that most people will be familiar with. Kit, who has repressed memories from traumatic events in her past, finds herself on the island that was her childhood home, now a facility for mentally ill teenagers. As she struggles …
The absolutely electrifying Australian crime novel ‘The Tell’ by Martin Chatterton weaves a wickedly satisfying tale of Raze Tanic, an upper-class Sydney student whose family-run an illustrious crime ring in the heart of the Australian city. Raze has everything he could ever want, except the relationship with his father, who has been jailed in a …
Eoin Colfer’s bestselling middle-grade adventure mystery novels chronicle the lives of twelve-year-old Artemis Fowl. In the first Artemis Fowl novel, we meet our eponymous character, who is more devious and clever than most adults. The novel follows Fowl after he attempts to catch a fairy in order to obtain gold for ransom. His main motive …
Scythe is a dystopian young adult novel by Neal Shusterman, and it tells the tale of a futuristic society in which all forms of death have been eradicated, and the only way a human can die is by being ‘gleaned’, a word which is synonymous with murder. However, only a few selection of trained individuals–known …
Released to the public on September 3rd of 2018, Violet Grace’s novel The Girl Who Fell tells the tale of Francesca ‘Chess’ Raven, an adolescent girl living with a woman named Gladys after the death of her parents. Chess Raven is a hacker, and becomes swept away in a grand and interesting adventure after the …
Book Review – White Night by Ellie Marney
Ellie Marney’s new novel takes the grass-roots feeling of a tight-knit country town, and throws in an explosive mixture of cult ideologies, peer pressure and moral dilemmas. Set in a small town in rural Victoria, White Night tells the story of a status quo shaken by one secretive community, and a boy and a girl who challenge the beliefs of both worlds.
The novel is quintessentially Australian: from the familiar tone of the dialogue to the vividly described settings, Marney expertly crafts a rich world for her characters so that their story takes on a life outside of the book. The way that the natural oasis of Eden is described transports the reader into the scene, delighting all of the senses.
While the story’s main thread revolves around the clashing of mainstream society and an environmental cult, minor plotlines are abundant. When not learning about the obscure community of Eden, the protagonist Bo is dealing with family secrets, doubt about his future, drama with his friends, and the organising of a fateful fundraiser. It can be easy to get lost in these subplots and forget that there’s a focal point to this story.
What begins as a feel-good rural story takes a turn darker than one would expect. No one chooses to write about polarising subject matter like cults and off-the-grid societies without having some kind of strong opinion, but while White Night attempts to show both sides of Eden in the beginning, Marney’s views come across too strongly and suddenly.
Whether communities like Eden are “good” or “bad” is kept purposefully vague for a long time, so long that it seems like Marney is letting the readers make up their own minds. But then the tone of the story takes a sharp twist, as if Marney is afraid her stance isn’t coming across. White Night wouldn’t be a story without Marney pushing Eden one way or the other, but it just needed more time to make the twist believable.
Full of ethical dilemmas and the power of community, White Night is a treasure trove of secrets and much more than it appears.
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The Graveyard Book, published in 2008, is a work of Neil Gaiman’s that instantly appeals to readers of the macabre and strange. The novel follows Nobody ‘Bod’ Owens through his experiences of living with a cohort of ghouls and ghosts within a cemetery. The Graveyard Book chronicles his life throughout the graveyard and the places …
Book Review – Neverland by Margot McGovern
Margot McGovern’s Neverland is a complex look into mental health through the lens of a mythical world that most people will be familiar with. Kit, who has repressed memories from traumatic events in her past, finds herself on the island that was her childhood home, now a facility for mentally ill teenagers. As she struggles …
Book Review – The Tell by Martin Chatterton
The absolutely electrifying Australian crime novel ‘The Tell’ by Martin Chatterton weaves a wickedly satisfying tale of Raze Tanic, an upper-class Sydney student whose family-run an illustrious crime ring in the heart of the Australian city. Raze has everything he could ever want, except the relationship with his father, who has been jailed in a …
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