Christine Keighery is best known for her prodigious output of children and young adult novels, which have found a readership far beyond her native Australia. This, her second adult novel, focuses on four high school friends whose bond is strengthened after an incident in a boy’s changing room affects one of the group. The other three, sensing an injustice, rally behind him – to fatal consequences.
“It was unanimous. The three of them were committed. They couldn’t have known that, by sun-up, their own lives would be changed forever.”
Keighley drops details of what the trio actually did throughout the novel, and its consequences, but doesn’t reveal key information until the end. Instead, she keeps the reader focused on the group’s present-day reunion and the changing dynamic between them.
Now in their 30s, the four catch up at a wedding after Stig, who’d suffered the fallout of that incident, had developed a drug problem and withdrawn from the group.
He now reveals he is going under a new name, Sadiki, an African word meaning “loyal”. He adds that he now lives at a spiritual retreat, Soul Haven, overseen by a guru-like figure named Acharya, who is prone to saying things like, “I’m seeing back to the past, the need to be fleet of foot when returning. Ah, but also, a chance to rectify past wrongs.”
We will also learn that she, too, has a past, with close connections to all involved.
For some reason, thrillers involving cults are popular at the moment. New Zealander JP Pomare’s 2020 novel In the Clearing, one of the better examples, was based loosely around The Family sect in Victoria, Australia, which met a dramatic demise in the 1980s. Charity Norman’s See You in September was another compelling read focused on a fictional doomsday cult here in Aotearoa.
Keighley’s Soul Haven, by comparison, suffers from a rather generic depiction. It’s something we’ve seen before on any number of TV shows and movies: a leader more intent on profit than prophecy, who’s adept at convincing sensitive and troubled souls they need her help to free themselves from self-imposed and societal shackles.
When more members of the high school group are seduced by Acharya’s ministrations – helped in one case by a dose of magic mushrooms – the secrets of the group, held close for years, threaten to finally come to light.
Though Keighley gives us an engaging enough read, both the characters and the prose retain a young-adult feel. To many readers, Sadiki, for example, will come across as a rather feckless character, easily led by whoever he comes in contact with and lacking the necessary charisma to drive a thriller. Acharya, meanwhile, never rises beyond the stereotypical cult-villain.
We’re Not Us Without You’s themes of friendship, loyalty and revenge are well traversed but the novel’s dialogue-heavy narrative makes it difficult to sustain the necessary tension or suspense.
We’re Not Us Without You, by Christine Keighery (Ultimo Press, $39.99), is out now.
