Less not more chop suey

With broadly similar subjects – Australians in South-East Asia – and related themes that touch on culture shock and existential angst, you could be forgiven for thinking that Noble Sindhu Horses and 98% Pure might have something in common. But these two first novels are a lesson in the difference that self-control and sensitivity on the part of the writer, and good judgment on the part of the editor, can make. To draw on the Asian motif for a moment, Noble Sindhu Horses is a delicate Asian broth, restrained and subtly flavoured, while 98% Pure is street-vendor chop suey – a bit of a mess and not so good for your health.

In Noble Sindhu Horses, Lynette Chataway has drawn on her time with an aid agency in a northern Thai village to explore not only the overseas experience but its near devastating after-effects. The characters of Francis and Ava, along with their daughter Elizabeth, are based on Chataway’s own family, and there is a strong sense of that reality in the writing. She manages to avoid the tedious eyewitness travelogue aspects to which so many other ‘I went overseas and then I wrote a novel’ writers have fallen prey. There are observations that only hard-won understanding can yield, and the novel rings with authenticity and integrity. Small moments are telling, such as when Ava goes to the supermarket, with a mental image of a starving refugee boy, under whose gaze she cannot bring herself to buy ‘toilet spray, or Exit Mould, or Ajax, or ice cream, or cordial, or instant noodles’.