Left Behind (Martine Kropkowski, Ultimo)

Martine Kropkowski’s Left Behind is a stunning depiction of the remote, wild and isolated beauty of K’gari, paired with a taut and insidious suspense that grabs you from the opening lines. Four friends embark on a week-long camping trip to the World Heritage–listed sand island off the Queensland coast, seeking adventure and the opportunity to reconnect away from the noise of everyday life. Unresolved arguments and shifting dynamics simmer just below the surface, while a literal storm brews on the horizon, before three of the friends go missing and Annabelle is left alone. The threat of an impending cyclone and its destruction is momentous; the missing campers, suspicious strangers and the deep isolation that follows the island’s evacuation are gloriously tense. Kropkowski’s writing is visually spectacular and gripping. However, the novel’s second half takes a more ambiguous and speculative turn when Annabelle begins hallucinating and her motivations become unclear, which may leave some readers unsettled after such a tightly woven first half. The line between fever-induced delusion and psychological breakdown is intentionally blurred, which may not offer the resolution some readers expect. Still, it does raise compelling questions about perception, trauma and survival under extreme stress. Left Behind is for fans of Kropkowski’s Everywhere We Look, as well as those who enjoy works by Jane Harper and Christian White, with a strong sense of tension and isolation that permeates every encounter the characters have with the natural world and those within it.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Kate Frawley is a former bookseller and a librarian in training. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

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