Summary
The book is written in the first person, with Tom, our narrator, beginning the prologue with a scene of his family leaving their home in the early morning. They have packed up all of their things into their station wagon and left, driving past “the ugly words” that they have received from their community and moving out of town altogether. As they reach the top of the hill, Tom thinks of his brother who isn’t there with their family, although we don’t know the reason yet.
Chapter One opens as Tom’s grandmother pressures Tom into saying grace at the table. Tom begins but is interrupted by his grandmother, who asks where Tom’s mom (her daughter) is, despite the fact that everyone knows she hasn’t been eating or getting out of bed since whatever happened with Daniel. Nevertheless, her mother forces her to come down. After they say a special grace for Australia Day, Tom reminisces on what Australia Day would be like under normal circumstances, with his dad at the barbeque and everyone running around being friendly. Gran has invited the priest to lunch as well, and Tom reflects on the fact that everyone in this town will likely know more about him than he knows about them.
During the conversation, we learn that Tom has been held back a year because of the events with Daniel, although his sister, Kylie, is still on track. Father Vincent invites Tom to the local rugby scrimmage, which is awkward since he hasn’t played for a while. Tom initially doesn’t want to go but is eventually persuaded, and his grandmother pressures everyone into making it a family outing. Gran tries to convince Mum to go, but she refuses and heads back to bed. Gran is irritated and starts banging around the dishes. Father Vincent offers to help her, but Gran insists that he can help her by praying for the family and for Daniel’s soul; as we will soon learn, Daniel is in prison.
As Tom lays in his new, dark bedroom, which used to belong to his uncle Brendan, he struggles to find the motivation to do anything, much less go to a touch footy game. The only bright side is that he’ll be getting out of the house for a little bit. Gran’s house is full of saints, with different pictures in each room, and the dark, closed-up nature of the house is starting to get to Tom. Kylie comes to tell him to get ready and starts complaining about how lunch was, but when Tom says that he was thinking of how bad Daniel must have it, she ends the conversation and walks away. Brendan then comes to get Tom, and after failing to get Mum to come, they all squeeze into the car and head to the match. Tom reflects on how different this is from Mumbilli, where he grew up. As they get out of the car, Brendan sees his friend, Shorty, and introduces him and Tom. Shorty reveals that he recognizes Tom’s names from the paper about successful rugby teams, although it’s implied that he initially mistakes Tom for Daniel.
Before the game, Tom remembers the last game he played on the 27th of August. They were in a sudden-death match competing for a place in the Wattle Shield premiership for the third year in a row. As they sit on the bench, Tom’s dad (who is also their coach) gives them a pep talk and tells them to stay focused, and it works—they win the game, to their surprise. Back then, Tom used to love a small game, but now, it doesn’t mean anything to him. But he puts on a brave face as he goes through and greets everyone before the game begins. He meets the town’s local rugby star, Jonny Tulake, who Tom realizes knows about the situation since Jonny asks after his mom. After this interaction, he meets the coach, who promises that he’ll have fun playing with them this year. There’s a bit of a hitch when they start, but Tom finds himself focusing as he gets back into the game. He, Jonny, and another boy named Rory end up making a good team, leading their side to victory easily. Although Tom is on a high during the game, he feels the emptiness return as he finishes. That emptiness turns to dread as soon as he is reminded that he has school tomorrow.
The next morning, Tom’s dad drops Tom and Kylie off at the side entrance to their new school, St. Benedict’s Catholic College. Tom tries to tease Kylie on the way there, but Kylie isn’t having it and ends up snapping at Tom that she hates him. She apologizes, but as they pull in, things are still tense. Their dad acknowledges that this is a hard time for them, but asks them to step up to the challenge. As he looks around, trying to remain unnoticed, he sees that Bennie’s isn’t that different from St. John’s in their old town. He heads to the office and meets Kylie just as she’s walking away. Upon looking closer, he notices that she’s upset but she brushes him off when he asks. Tom heads to his new classroom and takes the desk next to Rory as he begins class. He only recognizes a couple of other people and spends most of the time thinking about the move and when he’ll be able to move back to Mumbilli.
On the bus back home, Tom checks out the girls and thinks of Daniel again, reflecting on him and his last girlfriend, Claire. They had been fighting because of Daniel’s poor mood; usually, this was a sign Daniel was tired of his girlfriends, but in this case, he really liked Claire. Daniel was especially sensitive whenever Fin, their cousin and one of his best friends, was around Claire, which never really made sense to any of them since Fin loved Daniel. However, as Fin became more confident, Daniel began to resent him, especially when Fin ended up outplaying him on the field. Fin was the one to secure their place in the Wattle Shield, so Tom has wondered if maybe that contributed to their big fight on the night everything happened. Tom has been dissecting their interactions ever since.
Tom and Kylie get dropped off, with Kylie complaining about how hot she is, and Tom asks her how her day went. Kylie criticizes him for never talking about deep things, and then claims that football makes his life easier for him, which causes Tom to lose his temper. He yells at her about how Daniel wasn’t saved by football at all, and how he's also stuck in this town just like she is. Afterward, Kylie runs away, leaving Tom behind, who feels bad about blowing up at her. He again thinks back to that night, remembering that he didn’t get to the hall until after 8:30. Daniel and his friend, Luke, were already drunk and the party had already gotten going.
Things escalate after Tom sees Claire crying and discovers that Daniel has upset her, prompting them to break up. Daniel is drunk and furious and starts screaming about how he’s going to kill Fin. Tom and Daniel get into a fight, which Fin and Luke break up. Tom yells at Daniel that he deserves everything he gets, and walks away from the party. Later, Claire, along with his friends Matt and Snorter, catch up with him to check in, mentioning that Dan and Fin drove off from the party together. They talk about how drunk Daniel was but say that Fin said he would watch over him.
As they drive off, leaving Tom to continue walking home, the narration shifts back to the present moment. Tom arrives back at Gran’s house and checks in with his dad. Dad is taking Kylie to the pool and Mum has gone back to bed. Tom shares that his day was fine and heads back to the hallway, where he sees that his mom is under the covers again, shutting out the world.
Analysis
From the beginning, the first-person point of view lets us know that we’ll be getting up close and personal with Tom. Although it’s not clear what happened in the past, the tone of the novel tells us that whatever happened was really serious, serious enough to have resulted in the family being harassed. We learn that Tom’s brother, Daniel, is not with them as they move into the other town, giving us a clue that the event probably had something to do with Daniel. As we move into the first chapter, we learn that Tom’s grandmother has a tense relationship with the rest of the family and that she can be kind of demanding. It’s also clear that the event that occurred has had a significant enough impact that it has thrown Tom’s mother into a depression. The hyper-religious atmosphere of Gran’s house is something Tom is uncomfortable with. This piles on top of the nerves he already has about people being in his business.
Daniel has thrown his family into chaos, but they constantly try to recenter themselves. Tom being driven to play football reflects how serious the family is about making a change and moving on from the past. Tom himself, however, is not enthusiastic about this. Daniel’s choices (although we don’t know them yet) have left him utterly miserable. This feeling gets worse as a result of the highly religious atmosphere that Gran enforces in her house. The closed-up atmosphere is a sharp contrast to the openness that the Brennan house had before, and we can see this in Tom as well. However, Tom still prioritizes making his family happy. He goes to the football game since it’s important to his parents, and even in the midst of his unhappiness, he’s thinking about how Daniel feels in his own situation.
Meanwhile, it seems like the members of his family are a bit more preoccupied with themselves, except for Brendan, who is willing to organize the family and arrange everything. Even though he’s committed to making things work, Tom still feels alienated by the situation in the town, and it prevents him from even enjoying the drive to the game. As he reflects on the Wattle Shield game, we see that whatever happened was serious enough not only to put Daniel in prison but to affect the entire team. Since Tom is someone who values team and community, we can tell that the dissolution of that community probably hurt him just as much as the event itself. The dynamic during that game between Daniel and Fin foreshadows a later conflict, and the reader learns that while Daniel is loved by his brother, he can also be arrogant and a poor sport. Unlike Daniel, however, Tom doesn’t let his poor mood affect his play. Instead, rugby is an outlet for him and his first way of connecting to the community.
During their game, he meets two people who will be important to him during his time in Coghill—Jonny and Rory—although he doesn’t know it yet. The next morning, we see more of the tension between the family. While Tom is depressed, Kylie has reacted to their move by getting extremely angry, which is one of the first glimpses into the difference between their personalities. But despite Kylie’s anger, they still love each other, and Tom is still attentive to her when he notices something is wrong. Tom’s unwillingness to let go of Mumbili continues to manifest itself. Looking at the way Tom thinks of Mumbilli, it’s clear that Mumbilli is as much about the people as it is about the place for Tom. Losing the relationship between Daniel and Fin is the precursor for Tom losing Mumbilli. And without Mumbilli, Tom himself is lost, choosing to shut out the world.
For him, dealing with big issues is something he wants to do alone, which means that although he looks calm from the outside, inside, things are often more complicated. The fight between him and Kylie only throws him deeper into the past, where we see him struggle with the way that he fought in the past with Daniel the night of the accident. In the flashbacks, Daniel proves himself to be extremely volatile and selfish. In contrast, Tom is fair, taking Claire’s side against Daniel. When he and Daniel fight, however, Tom doesn’t immediately run to his room. Instead, he needs to take a walk home to cool off. In the present moment, Tom goes back under the covers, showing that even his anger lacks energy these days.
