Aussie novelist’s deft debut more character study than thriller

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This article was published 10/08/2024 (470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Clever, touching and often very funny, Australian author Kerryn Mayne’s debut novel combines a murder mystery with a coming-of-age tale.

Mayne’s story features an overly organized, socially awkward and lovable heroine, Lenny Marks, who may remind readers of Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler from TV’s The Big Bang Theory. Like Amy, Lenny is smart and hardworking. Unlike Amy, Lenny doesn’t have much of a life.

The 37-year-old Lenny lives in a quiet suburb of Melbourne, Australia, with 36 copies of The Hobbit for company. She cycles home from work every day at 4:00 p.m. She buys the same groceries from the same store every week to prepare the same meals.

Lenny doesn’t have any real friends — just Friends, the TV show, which she plays in the background at home while facing an imaginary Monica Gellar at the Scrabble board.

Her life is lonely but predictable. And her routines help her forget about the day her mother and stepfather disappeared when she was a child.

“Lenny’s existence was many things: simple, predictable and uneventful. It had taken considerable efforts and time to get to this point and she was not planning on disrupting the perfectly good order of things,” Mayne tells us.

But then, a letter from the parole board arrives.

Suddenly, uncomfortable memories start to surface and Lenny finds her strict daily regiment falling apart.

Unintentionally, Lenny starts reaching out to the people around her. As she does, she starts facing the trauma she’s buried for years and remembering what really happened the day her family left.

Along with novel writing, Mayne holds a day job as a police officer. But her background in law enforcement doesn’t play into the story much.

Instead of a hardboiled detective story or procedural, the story unfolds as a character study, with the heroine’s history teased out slowly — too slowly, at times.

Interestingly, Mayne pays little attention to the titular murder, exploring themes of trauma, recovery, justice and personal connection and focusing on how Lenny’s past affects her today.

For example, Lenny rarely understands social cues, has very little insight into her own behaviour and struggles with low self-esteem: “No one would notice Lenny Marks’s absence in their life. She likened herself to the word on the tip of your tongue that you can’t quite recall. It’s there, only it won’t come to mind and it’s of no consequence if it doesn’t,” Lenny muses at one point.

And yet Lenny’s is the novel’s strongest point: a main character readers will enjoy cheering on.

Readers may also be reminded of fellow Australian Graeme Simsion’s 2017 novel The Rosie Project, which features a sweet but clueless professor who finds love while searching scientifically for an ideal wife.

While Lenny Marks just debuted in North America this year, it was released Down Under in February 2023.

Mayne’s follow up, Joy Moody Is Out Of Time, another thriller, is already released in Australia. Readers who enjoy Lenny Marks may not have to wait much longer for Mayne’s next novel.

Kathryne Cardwell is a writer and settler in Treaty One Territory.