7/10

The Bus On Thursday

Shirley Barrett

Life has hit Eleanor Mellett with a right-hook of relationship breakdown and an upper-cut of breast cancer. Reeling from her treatment, she takes a primary school teaching job in the tiny mountainside town of Talbingo to start again. But Eleanor’s predecessor disappeared without trace overnight... Barrett, an Australian screenwriter, has fun with chick-lit stereotypes in her second novel: Eleanor warrants sympathy due to her illness, but is herself rather horrendous, and the tropes of best friend, new love interest and maternal longing are all twisted into unsettling, then terrifying, incarnations. Like Twin Peaks or The Turn Of The Screw, the low-level weirdness and black comedy builds slowly into dark horror.