This Is Where We Say Goodbye (Howard McKenzie-Murray, Fremantle)

This Is Where We Say Goodbye follows Maud Tarkington over the course of a single unsettling day in Fremantle: the day after her 21st birthday and the day of her brother Lloyd’s funeral. Rather than going directly to the ceremony, Maud drifts through the city, encountering memories and moments that circle around grief without ever quite confronting it head-on. The result is a novel less concerned with plot than with mood and voice. Howard McKenzie-Murray’s background as a playwright is evident in the compressed timeframe and dialogue-driven scenes that give the novel a sense of immediacy and momentum. Maud’s narration is digressive, self-aware and often darkly humorous, capturing how grief fractures thought and time. At its best, the novel conveys the rawness of early adulthood, when emotional intensity collides with uncertainty about identity and purpose. At times, however, this stylistic looseness makes it difficult to define the book’s intended readership. Although marketed as suitable for both young adult and adult audiences, Maud’s story leans more towards a youthful impulsiveness. That said, while some scenes and thematic concerns may resonate with older teens, most hover in a liminal space that makes the novel feel neither fully young adult nor convincingly adult in its address. This Is Where We Say Goodbye sits in an ambiguous space between genres and age categories. Readers drawn to character-driven narratives and unconventional structures will appreciate its originality, while others may find its tone and audience positioning less clear.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Karys McEwen is a librarian, author and the education advisor for the Melbourne Writers Festival. 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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