Tight Lines (Allee Richards, Summit)

Set in a small coastal town in regional Victoria, Allee Richards’s Tight Lines is a literary coming-of-age novel steeped in nostalgia and shaped by loss. On the cusp of adulthood, Luke and his best friends, twins Josh and Matty, spend their summers fishing, surfing and cliff-jumping – typical days in a beach town flooded with tourists each year. Spanning two decades, from 1995 to 2015, the novel traces their transition from awkward adolescence into adulthood within the constraints of an insular community.

The story opens with a sense of youthful naivety, but a tragic event disrupts an otherwise carefree summer, setting in motion a narrative shaped by grief, growth and the consequences of reckless decisions.

Richards’s writing is distinctly Australian, drawing on local idiom, cultural references and a strong sense of place. Shifts in perspective throughout the text add depth, offering multiple angles on the same events and revealing layers of characterisation that a single narrator might miss. Richards truly shines at capturing the depth of each character, regardless of how much time is spent from their point of view. The grasp on character voice is thorough, detailed and powerful.

Despite adult themes, this novel could easily be studied by older teenagers alongside other Australian classics such as Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi and Tim Winton’s novels. Tight Lines is confronting, capturing the enduring and often suffocating desire to be accepted – to feel “normal” and to belong, no matter our age.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Chloe Cook is a freelance reviewer and writer, currently working in libraries. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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