Mantle (Romy Ash, Ultimo)

Romy Ash’s Mantle is a novel that settles slowly and irrevocably, like sediment. Set on a windswept Tasmanian coastline, it follows Ursula as she returns to care for her dying mother, Delores, in a house perched between land and sea. What unfolds is a meditation on inheritance, environmental precarity and the quiet violence of time. Ash’s prose is exacting and sensory. The body is rendered as porous and vulnerable, mirroring the fragile ecosystems that surround it. Illness spreads through the novel, blurring the boundary between personal and planetary collapse. Ursula’s work as a geologist deepens the novel’s temporal register. Geological time sits uneasily beside human mortality, offering neither comfort nor clarity. Ash resists sentimentality, allowing humour, irritation and tenderness to coexist in scenes of intimate care. Delores is sharp, difficult and fiercely herself to the end, refusing to be softened into a symbol of decline. Mantle is structurally loose but thematically precise, accumulating meaning through repetition, attention and restraint. It asks what it means to witness the end of a life in an age already defined by endings – and how to live ethically in light of that knowledge. This is a novel of grief that never narrows its gaze, remaining alert to the entanglement of bodies, histories and damaged environments. Ash confirms herself as a writer of rare control and depth, capable of holding vast scales of loss without losing sight of the human.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Ananya Thirumalai is a Sydney-based writer and student of digital cultures and business law. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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