Biography
Jane was born in Manchester, England, and moved to Australia with her family at age eight. She spent six years in Boronia, Victoria, and during that time gained Australian citizenship.
Returning to the UK with her family as a teenager, she lived in Hampshire before studying English and History at the University of Kent in Canterbury.
On graduating, she completed a journalism entry qualification and got her first reporting job as a trainee on the Darlington & Stockton Times in County Durham.
Biography
She worked for several years as a senior news journalist for the Hull Daily Mail, before moving back to Australia in 2008.
She worked first on the Geelong Advertiser, and in 2011 took up a business reporting role in Melbourne.
In 2014, Jane submitted a short story which was one of 12 chosen for the Big Issue's annual Fiction Edition.
That inspired her to pursue creative writing more seriously, breaking through with The Dry at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in 2015.
Jane lives in bayside Melbourne with her husband Peter Strachan, and their two children.
Biography
She is the author of several bestsellers, including:
The Dry (2017)—book 1 of 3 in the Aaron Falk series
Won Ned Kelly for best first fiction
Note Val McDermid introduced this novel to the public before others noticed it.
Force of Nature (2018)—book 2 of 3 in Aaron Falk series
The Lost Man (2019)
Won the Ned Kelly
Won Davitt Awards
The Survivors (2021)
Exiles (2023)—book 3 of 3 in Aaron Falk series
Jane has won numerous awards for writing, including the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel, the British Book Awards Crime and Thriller Book of the Year, the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year and the Australian Indie Awards Book of the Year.
Interview—New York Times, Feb 7, 2019
Harper liked to tell friends that she had “more self-improvement activities than a Victorian spinster,” busying herself with hobbies including sewing, ballroom dancing, tennis and piano lessons. But there was one project Harper didn’t talk about: She was writing a murder mystery inspired by Gone Girl, Agatha Christie and all the other thrillers she’d loved reading since childhood.
“Is there anything more boring than someone trying to tell you about the novel they’re working on?” Harper asked. She was explaining why she didn’t let on about her manuscript, which she worked on for an hour before and after work each day.
A journalist eking out a novel is cliché, but what happened next was so shocking, you’d have to call it a twist. In April 2015, Harper entered pages she’d written over the past six months into the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. She won, picked up six-figure publishing deals in Australia, the United States and Britain, and went on to sell more than a million copies worldwide of her debut novel, The Dry.
Interview—New York Times, Feb 7, 2019
Harper outlined her writing process in a TEDx Talk called “Creativity in Your Control.” She returns often to the idea that artistic endeavor is made easier—and more enjoyable—with planning. “If you focus on the technical aspects,” she says, “you can build a framework which serves as a base for your creative ideas.”
Harper’s TEDx Talk was in part, perhaps, an effort to set the record straight: Much has been made in the news media about a 12-week creative writing course she took in 2014 through an offshoot of the London branch of the literary agency Curtis Brown. Shortly afterward, she produced the manuscript of The Dry. When Harper was asked about the course, it was the one time she seemed anything less than sunny. “I think honestly the impact of that has been overstated,” she said. “I was a journalist for thirteen years. I wrote every single day. I wrote thousands of words a week under pressure.” The course, she said, merely offered her some external accountability.
Interview—New York Times, Feb 7, 2019
The writing is the “fun part” for Harper, but for several months beforehand, she plots. As her Australian editor Cate Paterson said, every development in a Jane Harper story feels credible.
“It’s one of the things that I get annoyed about with other crime writers,” Paterson said. “Some late inclusion, or a new character out of the blue, is the one who did it, but what I find with Jane is that the clues are there all along and she puts them together in a clever way.”
Another element that Paterson said elevates Harper’s books from procedurals is an attention to character. Harper leans on the Australian environment in all of her novels. The Lost Man, like The Dry, is a study in isolation and its psychological and physical effects — particularly on men, who in regional areas of Australia are vulnerable to depression and suicide. “Setting informs plot,” is how Harper put it, when asked about her skill in conjuring up a familiar type of Australian bloke, at once taciturn and tender.
Interview—New York Times, Feb 7, 2019
“I knew I wanted somewhere hot and far-flung, but with a community of sorts,” Harper said of her choice of location. As part of her planning, she flew to Charleville, some 400 miles west of the Queensland capital of Brisbane, and then drove more than 500 miles further to the tiny town of Birdsville, on the edge of the Simpson Desert. The town’s claim to fame is hitting the highest-ever temperature in Queensland, of 49.5 degrees Celsius (121.1 degrees Fahrenheit). Now it’s the town that served as inspiration for The Lost Man.
Accompanying Harper on her journey was Neale McShane, the officer in charge of Birdsville Police Station for 10 years, who is now retired. McShane, by himself, once patrolled an area of outback the size of the United Kingdom, with a population of about 250 people.
Interview—New York Times, Feb 7, 2019
From her training as a journalist, Harper had determined exactly what she needed from the research trip: “I knew how I wanted the story to play out, but I’d left enough flexibility for the things I didn’t have at that stage.” She didn’t know how two-way radios worked, for instance, or what kitchens looked like at cattle stations. Those were the known unknowns. But there were still surprises: “If anything,” she said, “I’d underestimated how dangerous it can be out there, and how quickly things can go wrong.”
Cast of characters
Cam (Cameron)—found dead at Stockman's grave, painted the image that became locally famous, well liked by the community, successful rancher
Second son of Carl and Liz Bright
Wife is Ilse
Daughter Sophie—8 years old, loves horses, playing the guitar, has a broken arm from a fall off a horse
Daughter Lois "Lo"—5 years old, paints
Cast of characters
Nathan Bright—oldest son of Carl and Liz, Cam is his brother as is Bub
Xander (Alexander) is his son, lives in Brisbane with his mother, visiting his father for Christmas
Jacqui is his ex-wife, Xander's mother
Ostracized from the community for the past 10 years after he failed to assist his father-in-law, Keith, suffering a stroke on the road. Did so because Keith supported his daughter's legal action against Nathan for custody of their son.
Bub (Lee)—third son of Carl and Liz, Nathan and Cam are his older brothers
Cast of characters
Carl Bright, father to Nathan, Cam, and Bub, died in a car accident 20 years before the time of the novel, abusive
Liz Bright, the boys' mother and Carl's wife, loves riding horses
Ilse Bright, Cam's wife
Came to the area as a backpacker, worked in the local pub, had a one-night fling with Nathan after his wife left him, before she met Cam
Harry Bledsoe—family friend who has worked on the farm for years, technically an employee but knows the family and the business better than the brothers.
Steve Fitzgerald—in his 50s, the area's only nurse who mans the medical clinic in Balamara.
Sergeant Glen McKenna—the area's only police officer, Sergeant Ludlow substitutes
Cast of characters
Katy—beautiful backpacker hired by Cam just before he died. She was teaching the girls, works as housekeeper
Simon—Katy's companion backpacker, working on the station
Jenna Moore – English backpacker from Cameron’s youth who said that their drunken sexual encounter was forced. At the end of the novel, Nathan reads the letter she had written Cam with her version of the story.
Questions for discussion
One reviewer describes this novel as a "mash-up of an Agatha Christie country house mystery and a domestic noir"
The Guardian agrees that "Jane Harper's third novel is another splendid slice of outback noir."
Another reviewer describes it as: " . . . a character-driven mystery that keeps you turning the pages even though there isn't the obvious threat of a killer on the loose . . . "
So, this novel is definitely noir, but is it also a Christie-like mystery? What elements of this novel fit that genre?
Answer
It begins with a mystery: how did Cameron die. Definitely "misadventure." He left his car with its AC, water, shelter, provisions, to trek on foot to the Stockman's grave—something no one familiar with life in the Outback would ever do.
Unless they intended suicide, leaving the car so far away. And if this was a suicide, why? What motivated Cameron to do it?
Backstories—every major character in this novel has a backstory, which Harper hints at, drops clues about, as she progresses, but readers have to keep reading to discover those stories and their relevance to the plot.
In her other novels, such as The Dry, Harper focuses on the past as it impacts the present.
And with those stories come character and plot development. Although everyone thinks well of Cameron, we discover that he may not be the stellar character he seems to be. And Nathan may not be as harsh and content with his self-imposed isolation as he seems.
One reviewer, commenting on the skill with which Jane Harper draws the outback itself, writes that the Outback is in fact "the physical and mental assailant."
Questions for discussion
Other than the prologue, this novel is written in the third person limited point of view; in other words, we read the story from Nathan's perspective. We know what he says, does, thinks, feels.
As is the case with this point of view, he's also somewhat unreliable because his childhood was warped by abuse, his marriage has ended in a contentious divorce, he's estranged from his son, his dog was poisoned, and he's ostracized from the community in which he lives.
Why did Jane Harper choose this point of view? Why not Ilse's or Liz's? Or Harry's, for a more "outsider" point of view?
Questions for discussion
Like Tana French, Jane Harper also likes to work with people in small communities where everyone know everyone and has for years. But these communities can be both positive and negative.
How do they function in this novel?
Questions for discussion
Another theme in this novel is isolation, sometimes because of the landscape where neighbors live hours away from each other. Several characters mention that they have no friends, despite the numbers who come for Cameron's funeral.
Sometimes it's self-imposed, as it is with Nathan.
How does the theme of isolation play out in this novel?
Questions for discussion
Much of this novel is based on ambiguity and the opinions people form when they don't know the facts. It's also about how people respond to those stories or opinions. For example:
From the beginning, Nathan has suspicions about Cameron's death—how it happened, why it happened. Part of that is Cam's state of mind; could he have committed suicide, and if so why?
Cam's encounter with Jenna Moore. Was it rape, or not? We don't get an answer until the end of the book when Nathan reads the letter she has written Cam. She considers it a sexual encounter that she conceded to, out of stupidity, loneliness, and alcohol. She blames herself as well as Cam and has suffered from the encounter for years.
Nathan's encounter with a stricken Keith, Jacqui's father, and his abandonment of someone in need, an unforgivable sin in the Australian outback. He plays a game of "what if" with himself. And he did go back, although the town ignores that part of the story because of what Keith told them.
Question for discussion
Secrets and lies and the reasons why people keep them are the core of this novel, as they were in The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. What are the secrets and lies in this novel, and why do they keep those secrets?
Questions for discussion
What happens to bring about the denouement, or unravelling of the plot, at the end of this novel? So when, where, with whom does the unravelling begin?
Obviously the whole book is predicated on Cameron's unexpected death, and the questions that arise as to its cause. It brings the entire family together for the funeral when they haven't been together for several years, even a decade.
Questions for discussion
The Stockman's grave is a symbol, and a theme throughout this novel. What does it mean to the various characters in the novel?
And so too is the painting that Cameron made, the one behind which Liz hides the money and documents Ilse had gathered to run away, and hid at the Stockman's grave.
Questions for discussion
How do you feel about Nathan at the end of the novel?
Questions for discussion
Were you surprised by the ending? Spoiler Alert!! Why did Liz run down her own son?
Questions for discussion
So, who in this novel is The Lost Man?
Questions for discussion
How would you describe the life women lead in this environment? What choices do they have?
Breakout room question
This question has come up before, but this time I'm asking you. All too often in Australian novels, men are violent, hard, abusive. Do you think this is a theme or trend in Australian novels? Why do you think male characters have such bouts of temper? Or is this just coincidence in the novels we've read?
Next week
Background on the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)
Week after:
Dictionary of Lost Words