The Sun Walks Down, Fiona McFarlane
The Sun Walks Down, Fiona McFarlane
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

The Sun Walks Down
A Novel

Author: Fiona McFarlane

Narrator: Emma Jones

Unabridged: 12 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/14/2023


Synopsis

One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Audiobooks of 2023

"Such a large cast of characters would normally be difficult to keep straight in an audiobook without tedious backtracking, but McFarlane’s skill in evoking their distinct inner lives and Jones’s deftness in capturing them in manner and accent keep them perfectly distinct." —The Washington Post

“The Sun Walks Down is the book I'm always longing to find: brilliant, fresh and compulsively readable. It is marvelous. I loved it start to finish.”
—Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House

"Listeners learn as much about the searchers and their inner lives as they do about the missing child. Each person--including farmers, cameleers, policemen, Indigenous trackers, and more--is examined with precision and telling details."- AudioFile

Fiona McFarlane's blazingly brilliant new novel, The Sun Walks Down, tells the many-voiced, many-sided story of a boy lost in colonial Australia.

In September 1883, a small town in the South Australian outback huddles under strange, vivid sunsets. Six-year-old Denny Wallace has gone missing during a dust storm, and the entire community is caught up in the search for him. As they scour the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly—newlyweds, farmers, mothers, indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, artists, schoolteachers, widows, maids, policemen—confront their relationships, both with one another and with the land­scape they inhabit.

The colonial Australia of The Sun Walks Down is noisy with opinions, arguments, longings, and terrors. It's haunted by many gods—the sun among them, rising and falling on each day in which Denny could be found, or lost forever.

Told in many ways and by many voices, Fiona McFarlane's new novel pulses with love, art, and the unbearable divine. It arrives like a vision: mythic, vivid, and bright with meaning.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

About Fiona McFarlane

Fiona McFarlane is the author of The Night Guest; The High Places, which won the International Dylan Thomas Prize; and The Sun Walks Down. Her short fiction has been published in The New Yorker and Zoetrope: All-Story. She teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.


Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on June 05, 2023

Breaking: Girl Who Doesn't Really Like Historical Fiction Reads A Historical Fiction Book And Doesn't Really Like It. i still read like 1 historical fiction book per year because i'm obsessed with proving myself wrong, and i was excited about this one because it's literary-y... but i just didn't conne......more

Goodreads review by Angela M on August 25, 2023

Sometimes you read a book and the place really doesn’t matter . It could be anywhere and still carry the depth and significance of the story. Other times, the place is such an important part of the story and you really couldn’t separate the two and get the same effect . In this quiet, intense and be......more

Goodreads review by Lark on October 29, 2022

I read and loved Fiona McFarlane's THE NIGHT GUEST when it came out and it was a tense and terrifically claustrophobic read, one that focused on the fate of just one character. This next novel by McFarlane is written with the same loving attention to human happenings, but with a much broader focus.......more

Goodreads review by Suz on December 07, 2022

Covering the week where a sensitive young boy, Denny, goes missing in the hot dry South Australian outback in 1883. This book covered a lot of ground, of those who looked for Denny, those who came across him, and his family. The trackers tasked to find him and the various towns folk who were a mixed......more

Goodreads review by Melissa on February 28, 2023

Ohh. This novel! My love affair is multi-faceted: the beautiful, evocative language; the Australian desert setting so reminiscent of my Sonoran desert home; the deep dive into rich and complicated characters; the nods to artistry and creative pursuits; the respect of the natural world; the symbolism......more


Quotes

Advance Praise

The Sun Walks Down is a revelation. McFarlane places her lens first over the disappearance of a small boy in the Australian Outback and zooms out, weaving the stories of the people involved in the search for him into a tapestry as richly imagined and fully realized as anything I’ve read in recent memory. Her sentences fit together with the beauty of fine carpentry, and with them she’s constructed a novel that calls to my mind no less than Patrick White’s The Tree of Man. I can’t think of another writer working today who I admire more.”
—Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds

“This tale of a farming community’s search for a missing child offers intimate human drama, ruminations on the intersections of art and life, and a sweeping, still relevant view of race and class in Australia . . . A masterpiece of riveting storytelling.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“The Sun Walks Down is a brilliant, intimate epic, a book about a family and also about history that is full of heart and heat. Fiona McFarlane's ear for the gurgles and clamor and hidden symphonies of her characters’ souls is flawless; the way their lives intertwine is propulsive, heartbreaking. She is, simply, one of the best writers around.
Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Souvenir Museum and Bowlaway

“Fiona McFarlane’s last book was scintillating. The Sun Walks Down is even better. It’s compelling: old-fashioned in all the best ways, historically sensitive, generous in storytelling and yet modern and sharp.”
—Sarah Moss, author of The Fell

The Sun Walks Down by Fiona MacFarlane is, quite simply, the best novel I've ever read about 19th century Australia. A tense search for a lost child unfolds with rising dread against a landscape of harsh and radiant beauty, amid lives as tangled as barbed wire.”
—Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse

Gorgeous storytelling and superb characters are among the glories of The Sun Walks Down. Fiona McFarlane is an extraordinary writer, one of the best working today. Her magnificent reworking of the lost child story showcases the profound understanding she brings to people, places and the past. I lived in this wise, majestic novel for days and never wanted it to end.”
—Michelle de Kretser, author of The Hamilton Case


Awards

  • New Yorker Best Books of the Year
  • CPL: Chicago Public Library Best of the Best
  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
  • Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year