A quantum of solastalgia permeates BRUNY, a sprawling geopolitical epic with family saga and espionage notes.

Terrorism comes to Tasmania as BRUNY begins with a bang, the blowing up of a barely completed bridge between main island Tassie and its pocket sized sibling, Bruny Island.

In this not too distant future, Tasmania has a conservative premier, J Coleman, known as JC, The Labor Opposition is led by his sister Max.

After the bombing of the bridge, JC invites his twin sister, Astrid, known as Ace, a New York based UN conflict resolution specialist, to come home and help deal with the aftermath. He had a war on his hands, a war about progress, and there was an election coming.

Ace’s homecoming sparks a multitude of conflict to be resolved between political parties, conservationists and not least her own family. Duplicity, subterfuge, peeling back the pragmatism and finding opportunism, blind ambition, and the literal selling out of the country.

On one level a spy story, on another a political thriller and on a third a threnody on a present that is contemptible of both the past and the future.

Tightly plotted within its 400 pages, the political and emotional themes are inseparable from the narrative urgency.

The characters and setting are fully realised, the prose pacy and accessible which works a compelling hold upon our interests and sympathies. Ace is a particularly arresting creation, a strong, capable resilient woman in her fifties, suffering from what her daughter calls PTDS – post traumatic divorce syndrome. Actually, Astrid thinks the S in the acronym stands for shame, ashamed that she couldn’t peg her husband for what he really was.

Generous in scale and impact, intricate in interpersonal relationships, BRUNY bridges genre gaps, spanning international intrigue and subterfuge closer to home.

As Astrid realises, “Risk is always opaque and catastrophe is more imminent than you think.”

BRUNY by Heather Rose is published by Allen & Unwin and is shortlisted for the 2020 Indie Book Award