Quin and Josh Dawson, twins and dual narrators in Megan O’Neill’s debut novel, grew up on the edge of a rural New Zealand town next to their mutual best friend, Henry, bonded for life by the long bus rides to and from school each day. Alternating points of view unpack each sibling’s relationship with Henry, an intelligent and thoughtful young man with his own set of complicated family dynamics.
For Josh, Henry is a well-measured counterweight to his more self-destructive instincts, and for Quin, he’s a necessary anchor – the boy who sneaks into her bedroom at night, lying on top of the duvet to comfort her when the twins’ mother is diagnosed with a life-altering disease.
The book cuts between flashbacks of the trio in high school, and nine years later, when Henry returns home after moving abroad abruptly after high school, following a falling-out with Quin at a party. While the intervening time seems to have been kind to Henry – he comes back steadier and more self-assured than ever – the siblings’ lives have unravelled.
Their mother has moved into a rest home, slowly deteriorating in front of them, and they no longer speak to each other. Josh deals with the pain by drinking himself into nothingness, and Quin resents him for leaving her to deal with their mother’s sickness on her own. There’s also a cruel question mark looming over her head: does she carry the gene responsible for her mother’s condition?
Josh is a complex character in his own right. On the surface, he’s funny, hardworking and well-liked. But the pattern of people he cares for dropping out of his life leads to an inability to be vulnerable or intimate, and a potent anger that rushes up unchecked, especially towards his sister.
O’Neill is perceptive in the way she unfurls Josh’s self-doubt; a contemporary voice touching on the current mental health crisis and, particularly, the more stigmatised aspect of that in young men. Josh is insecure when Quin and Henry grow close again, this time without him, and he wonders if those who left him did so because he didn’t love them well, and whether he’s capable of loving better: “Whenever I felt bad about the way I loved people, I’d remember what Mum told me all those years ago. How we all just love the best we can. The problem being, as I see it, just as often, it’s not anywhere near enough.”
This book is an ode to the unruly relationships we foster and try hard to hold on to, and a study of how unspoken truths can break us. The writing feels modern and the characters have potential, though it may lean a little too far into the archetypes and clichés of its genre to offer a truly fresh perspective. Little is revealed of the years between the characters’ teenage and adult lives, which feels like a missing core and makes their intense hostility towards each other feel tenuous at times.
The Dawsons idealise Henry, and it’s not until the very end when they put down their own baggage that they recognise he’s as human and fragile as the rest of them. While the book largely considers whether Quin and Henry can grow to love again, it’s just as absorbing to find out if Quin and Josh have healed enough to find their way back to each other.
