The protagonist works as a call centre operator for triple zero, and the ongoing daily drama of emergencies remains the backdrop to her own life of self-destructive behaviours, drinking too much, sleeping with strangers and continuing an on again / off again affair with a man she knows is not good for her. The excruciating thing is that time carries on and you love them anyway.’ I found this whole section quite profound. The excruciating thing is not to have witnessed the person you love commit, upon your person or another’s, an unforgiveable act. Our experiences are so frequently unbearable to us because real life is just sheer bloody continuity. Only in adulthood does it begin to dawn on us that many of those promises cannot be kept.’ It continues until the final paragraph: ‘But our lives contain no line breaks.

It begins: ‘Certain promises are made to us as children. There is one particularly beautiful page that stood out for me – page 123. In fact, in terms of plot, not much happens – the book is more about connections, thought and ruminations. The language is beautiful – literary, languid prose that meanders along from time to time, and from place to place, stepping lightly over the structure of plot and concentrating more on the stream of consciousness revelations of the characters. This book reminded me very much of Ronnie Scott’s recent novel The Adversary, and if you enjoyed that, you will almost certainly like The Inland Sea.

While Watts does refer back periodically to the historical aspect, it is a way of saying something profound about humanity’s search for that which eludes us, and our frequent optimism that there is something ‘out there’ if only we could find it. From the blurb, I was prepared for an historical story about explorer John Oxley travailing the wilderness of central Australia in the 19 th century, searching for water and the myth of the inland sea, but rather than this being the central tenet of the story, it is only a touchstone for the main narrative which is set in the present day and concerns Oxley’s great-great-great-granddaughter and her search for meaning in a 20-something coming of age story. The Inland Sea (One / Pushkin Press 2020), the debut novel by Madeleine Watts, is not at all what I expected.

The inland sea by madeleine watts