The Precipice

Thea Farmer, a reclusive and difficult retired school principal, lives in isolation with her dog in the Blue Mountains. Her distinguished career ended under a cloud over a decade earlier, following a scandal involving a much younger male teacher. After losing her savings in the financial crash, she is forced to sell the dream house she had built for her old age and live on in her dilapidated cottage opposite. Initially resentful and hostile towards Frank and Ellice, the young couple who buy the new house, Thea develops a flirtatious friendship with Frank, and then a grudging affinity with his twelve-year-old niece, Kim, who lives with them. Although she has never much liked children, Thea discovers a gradual and wholly unexpected bond with the half-Vietnamese Kim, a solitary, bookish child from a troubled background. Her growing sympathy with Kim propels Thea into a psychological minefield. Finding Frank's behaviour increasingly irresponsible, she becomes convinced that all is not well in the house. Unsettling suspicions, which may or may not be irrational, begin to dominate her life, and build towards a catastrophic climax.

About the Author :
Before becoming a novelist, Virginia Duigan was a regular feature writer with the National Times, and contributed documentaries to ABC radio. Born in Cambridge with an English mother and Australian father, she was brought up in both countries and now lives in Sydney with her husband, Bruce Beresford. Before becoming a novelist, Virginia Duigan was a regular feature writer with the National Times, and contributed documentaries to ABC radio. Born in Cambridge with an English mother and Australian father, she was brought up in both countries and now lives in Sydney with her husband, Bruce Beresford.

Review :
“Virginia Duigan’s third novel delves deeply into the complex emotional recesses of her protagonist, offering a haunting take on pushing boundaries too far.” "Duigan's approach to truth-telling in fiction in some ways harks back to Dostoyevsky. Thea dares us to disbelieve her and the more she does so, the more powerful her account becomes. Is it possible for an unreliable witness, a witness who might be, by her own admission, paranoid, to tell a truth others are too blind, lazy or self-absorbed to see?" "In these gradations and in her privacy the novel accumulates its power. Duigan builds the tension and reveals Thea's history in such understated ways that the novel darkens almost imperceptibly. Its narrative brink, however, is a sharp one. The psychological astuteness of her portrayal recalls Thea Astley's work. But as Thea's eccentricity begins to unravel into more erratic and sexually ambivalent behaviour, then into violence, Elizabeth Jolley's work suggests itself as a more obvious precedent."