The Others by Mark Brandi

Publisher's Synopsis

I heard voices talking last night. I've never heard my father talk to someone else. Not that I can remember. I was in bed, and I heard my father's voice first. He was talking to someone, and then I heard another man with a deep voice. The man got angry, I could tell, even though I couldn't hear exactly what he was saying. Then my father said, 'I'd kill you first.'

On his eleventh birthday, Jacob's father gives him a diary. To write about things that happen. About what he and his father do on their farm. About the sheep, the crop, the fox and the dam. But Jacob knows some things should not be written down. Some things should not be remembered.

The only things he knows for sure are what his father has taught him. Sheltered, protected, isolated. But who is his father protecting him from? And how far will his father go to keep the world at bay?

All too soon, Jacob will learn that, sometimes, people do the most terrible things.

Review of The Others by Mark Brandi 

The Others is the third novel by Mark Brandi and, as with the earlier books, it’s a story that is strong in imagery and a strong sense of place. I might categorise it as a wonderful piece of literary fiction smattered with dollops of suspense.

Now, I may be on my Pat Malone here, but I drew quite a few comparisons between The Others and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. A father and son, alone and surviving in a world that has apparently suffered a devastating apocalypse with a desperate fear of contact with outsiders. In this case, the outsiders are referred to as ‘the others’. Admittedly, the co-dependence and trust found in The Road was not apparent in The Others, but certainly other aspects were evident.

Young Jacob lives alone with his father on a remote property in Tasmania. They are effectively cut off from the rest of civilization thanks to his father’s desire to drop out and live a self-contained lifestyle.

To keep Jacob close to home, he has been told that the rest of the world has been devastated by a plague that threatens to wipe anyone who comes in contact with other people. And it is this story that has taught him to fear outsiders, better known as ‘the others’.

The story is told by the 11-year-old Jacob through the diary he was given for his birthday and asked (ordered?) to regularly write in by his father. We gain keen insights into the young mind that is thirsting mightily for information as he tries to make sense of the tightly controlled world around him.

Author Mark Brandi does an outstanding job of leading us through Jacob’s experiences and his interpretation of the various setbacks he encounters. We witness real growth as he starts to understand more about his immediate surroundings as well as a dawning realisation of what might be possible beyond the sanctity of the farm. All the while he was also keenly aware of ensuring he didn’t say or do anything that might incur the wrath of his father. 

“The soft eyes are worse than when he gets angry. They hang around like the fog. Like the fog on the hill in winter. That’s what it’s like. But when he gets angry, even if the whites of his eyes scare me, it passes pretty quick. It’s more like a storm coming over the hill. A storm in spring. Raining hard, then passing. Different from the fog.”

Although The Others may be classified as a crime novel, it is not really typical of the genre. Certainly, crimes are inferred as the story unfolds. But more important is the relationship between Jacob and his father as well as Jacob’s developing understanding of a possible world beyond the farm. On the one hand, the father is a teacher, a protector and a provider. But on the other, he is the enemy, a gaoler and a tormentor.

The great unknown in this story is Jacob’s father. How he will react to some of the things Jacob does, what he is doing early each morning when he disappears from the house, what his motivations are for keeping the pair of them isolated.

We only understand the father through the words of Jacob’s diary. Because, ultimately, Jacob is an unreliable narrator through no fault of his own. He can only tell us what he believes and what he’s told and this can’t possibly be the truth.

It is this uncertainty that creates the tension that runs deeply through the storyline. And it is this uncertainty that keeps you, as a reader, interested and invested in the outcome.

The Others is superbly crafted and Brandi has done an outstanding job of drawing the reader into Jacob’s life. He constructs an insular world of dependence and trust based on the word of one man. The idea that danger lurks beyond the safety of home and family looms large, but it may also be hiding an awful, more sinister truth.