FALLOW

Daniel Shand / Pan Macmillan / $18

When we first meet brothers Paul and Mikey, they’re living rough, on the run in Scotland’s remote north. Mikey has been released from prison after serving time for killing a child when only a boy himself. Narrator Paul is his protector, determined to guard him from the press, police and psychologists. When the pair hole up with a New Age cult, the real dynamic between the brothers emerges and Paul’s constructed “personality” crumbles. In this darkly funny and rather random road tale, the pared-back prose is occasionally coloured with poetic touches (a lake’s edge is “marbled like meat”). Daniel Shand’s novel deftly explores the ties between siblings bound by need, guilt and resentment.