With thanks to the publisher and Libro.fm for an advance listening copy of this book. All opinions are my own. This audiobook was narrated by Lewis Fitzgerald.
Oof. Having read M.L. Stedman’s previous book, The Light Between Oceans, and cried through it, I knew to expect an emotional walloping with her new novel. It’s a different kind of emotional gut punch than The Light Between Oceans was but a punch nonetheless.
Once again, Stedman takes us to a remote and difficult part of Australia. Rather than a remote island lighthouse, this time we are deep in the Australian outback, on a sheep station known as Meredith Downs. The McBride family have lived and worked on this land for generations and they have made a success of it, now with a million acres of land. Phil and Lorna have 3 nearly grown children and the future of Meredith Downs seems mapped out. But a tragic accident kills Phil and their eldest son, Warren, while leaving their youngest son Matt damaged emotionally and physically. (This occurs almost in the opening of the novel so I wouldn’t consider it a spoiler.)
Matt, his mother, and his sister Rose are left to carry on with their lives and figure out the future of the sheep station. Just as it seems like they are going to be able to make something out of it all, another terrible action takes place and, again, their lives are all altered. I won’t tell you what this second tragedy is because that would be a spoiler. This one is less of a tragedy and more of a terrible decision and when it happened I was so upset and bothered by the characters’ actions that I almost stopped reading. I actually went online and read reviews to try and figure out what direction the story was going to take. I did end up finishing the novel and I’m satisfied that I did but this one decision left a bad taste in my mouth.
To be fair to Stedman, I don’t think at any point she was lauding the characters’ choices. I simply felt that it wasn’t necessary for them to have made them. We could have reached the same drama and difficulty another way so why choose something so distasteful?
This is a story about family and it’s a story about community. And the backdrop of this place that is so remote (and most of the story is set before telephones and internet are household items so the McBrides really are on their own out there) and so difficult to survive in, really puts the importance of family and community in the spotlight. We get to know some of the community members that surround the McBride family. The former POW who hunts kangaroos, the nosy wife of the postmaster, the wayward son of a well-to-do English family who is sent to Meredith Downs to straighten out. They all have their roles to play and as remote as they are, the impact they have on each other’s lives cannot be understated.
I’ve hesitated to recommend A Far-Flung Life to anyone since I finished. For all the things I liked about it, I hated that one part so much and, by the end, it left me wondering how I was supposed to feel about it all. Just as she did in The Light Between the Oceans, Stedman creates characters with moral ambiguities. They are not bad people but maybe they’ve done terrible things. Can we the reader forgive them for that? Can they forgive themselves?
Karissa Reads Books 
As I read your review, I thought, “There is no way in hell I’m picking up this book. I hate sappy novels.” And then you got the part about the secondary characters, and I wanted to read it so badly! I mean, I love side characters like that. But it doesn’t seem worth it to read the whole book just to get to them. Speaking of sheep, though, has your family see The Sheep Detectives? It’s pitched like a kids’ movie, but it’s also dark, like a Roald Dahl book!