Highway Thirteen - by Fiona McFarlane

Book Synopsis

WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE
Named a Best Fiction Book of the Year by Minnesota Star Tribune and Kirkus
A New Yorker Recommended Read of the Year

A gripping, enigmatic collection of linked short stories about the reverberations of a serial killer's crimes in the lives of everyday people.

In the small town of Barrow, Australia, people go about their ordinary lives. They drive to work through the dense state forest. They raise their families. They flirt and yearn. They lie and confess. Some of them leave home. Some of them return.

Darkness thrums beneath the surface of these ordinary lives: the violence of one man, a serial killer whose murders made Barrow infamous. His twelve victims--women, men, mostly young--are long gone, but their deaths are felt, beyond the forest where they were buried, beyond this country, beyond even this time. In the past, where a young woman on a school trip to Rome sees something she shouldn't have. In the present, where a man confronts an ancient grief on the suburban streets of Texas. In the future, in the hands of journalists and podcast hosts and television actors whose livelihoods hinge on the twin spectacles of loss and violence.

Highway Thirteen is a luminous wonder: a book about the collisions between public and private selves, between parents and children, between history and what comes after, between the living and the dead. Fiona McFarlane's roving vision is itself a story about stories--those we tell, retell, forget, sell, disprove, inherit, live through--and a work of extraordinary power and magic.

Review Quotes

"Fiona McFarlane writes with psychological precision and a masterful sense of suspense. Each story is artfully constructed and the way they fit together, spanning seventy-eight years, is nothing short of dazzling. Fiona McFarlane's book is a tour de force about the stories we tell, the surprising ways our lives connect, and the ripple effects of violence."
--The Story Prize judges' citation

"An accomplished collection, stylish and lyrical in its prose and deeply sensitive in its characterization. The stories are richly layered, often turning back on themselves or in unexpected directions, and McFarlane's precision and craft are one of the great pleasures of the book."
--Fiona Wright, The Guardian

"The pages turn themselves . . . McFarlane's a startlingly gifted stylist and she makes the correct call, keeping Biga shadowy . . . Highway Thirteen is a Cubist collage of grief and suspense, grand betrayals and cryptic desires. It entertains even as it plunges headfirst into unspeakable evil."
--Hamilton Cain, Minnesota Star Tribune

"Reading Highway Thirteen is the literary equivalent of watching an eclipse: one must trace the shadow to see the spectacle . . . A masterclass in reflection and refraction. Fiona McFarlane is interested in what we choose to see and what we choose to ignore. It is easy to conjure up devils, demons and monsters--to spin blood-soaked tales of the murder forest. Far harder, she shows, is to face our own, 'ordinary' backyard cruelties."
--Beejay Silcox, Times Literary Supplement

"[Highway Thirteen] operates more like a collection of short stories with a shared thematic spine than a traditional novel, earning a distinct stylistic character of its own . . . Under McFarlane's apt curation, they lend themselves to a bigger picture, allowing her to examine situations from a number of angles without ever infringing on their complexity . . . Disturbing, entrancing, heartfelt."
--Ellie Dean, Readings

"Twelve stories are artfully connected by one serial killer . . . As McFarlane weaves in and out of . . . daily lives and untangles their varying degrees of separation from Biga and the evil he embodies, she impressively captures a somewhat abstract feeling: the way something tragic that happened to a friend of a friend can haunt you. McFarlane's dexterous writing offers sharp, evocative descriptors . . . With each passing page of each chapter, tension ramps up as the reader anticipates how each new character will wind up being related."
--Naomi Elias, KQED

"McFarlane is a master at just about everything: dialogue, setting, comic timing . . . But her biggest accomplishment is creating an empathic bond with people whose lives are touched by unexplainable violence . . . McFarlane sets them off on journeys that are compulsively suspenseful and enormously readable."
--Mary Ann Gwinn, Los Angeles Times

"McFarlane delivers stores that are as complex as they are haunting . . . A thrilling collection that explores an uncanny restlessness haunting the Australian psyche. Its crystalline prose and keen observations about everyday life open up new ways of thinking about the historical crimes that underpin our collective unsettlement."
--Monique Rooney, The Conversation

"Highway 13 doesn't so much investigate the psyche of a serial killer, or even the culture that created him (though it touches on both) as our preoccupation with crime as a mirror that reflects us. The stories we weave and draw on to explain our lives, form our personalities and understand others are perhaps the truest subject of this book . . . Vibrant and intricately crafted, from its taut sentences and pitch-perfect psychological observations to its very order of stories."
--Jo Case, Sydney Morning Herald

"[A] smart, deeply moving collection . . . Readers may be tempted to hazard an opinion of who and what the killer is from the perspectives his ancestors, neighbors, the media, groupies, even the tangentially involved, offer, but in the end it is their stories--of loss, obsession and brokenness--that linger."
--Paula L. Woods, Los Angeles Times

"Each story . . . stands alone beautifully. Woven together, they illustrate the long-reaching, often unexpected ripple effects evil has on every life it touches."
--Jane Harper, Booklist

"However entertaining, McFarlane's stories continually remind readers that behind true-crime stories' escapist pleasure exist real death and human pain. Addictively engaging, profoundly serious fiction from an underappreciated master."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Eerie and insightful . . . McFarlane beautifully renders the ways in which news of the crimes warps some of her cast's relationships and causes other characters to slip into obsession. It's a standout meditation on a community's legacy of violence."
--Publisher's Weekly

"This Möbius strip of linked stories bends and twists the crime genre until it is barely recognisable . . . The result is a riveting study of human nature."
--Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse

"These sublime stories have the poise and clarity of classics. As Fiona McFarlane's characters edge towards revelation or disaster, her artistry shines on every page."
--Michelle de Kretser, author of Scary Monsters

About the Author