Here in my room, in the silence, I look at the last entry in this battered exercise book. I am looking for a pattern. But no pattern emerges, no structure. There seems to be so little to catch hold of, only the things that happen.

The Unnamed narrator of Rain in the Distance travels around Europe and South America. She remembers fragments of her childhood on an Australian sheep station, her years in a grim boarding school and time spent in the Sydney family home. She's aimless and isolated and although she's traveling through Argentina, Chile, Guatemala and Salvador during times of great upheaval and terror she misses it entirely.

This book reads more like a memoir than a novel and there's a feeling of detachment that makes everything feel less important than it should be. Falkiner does describe Paris and South America beautifully, not in the sense of pretty vistas, but the cheap hotels and travel ennui are well rendered. ( )