Blind Night

I saw this book sitting in a remainder pile at Coles and had to have it. Strube's observations of modern life are keen and wry and deeply disturbing - family violence and dysfunction with a twist. It's that twist that makes her novels bearable. Blind Night begins with a conflagration when a truck veers into a house leaving its occupants, single ex-drug addict mum, McKenna, and her eight year old daughter, Logan, homeless. McKenna is rendered colour-blind from the concussion she receives and has to learn to live in a shadowy world, in more ways than one. They are forced into a seedy motel with a motley crew of disenfranchized characters because it is the only place that will accept their narcoleptic dog, Stanley. It's a dark, dark beginning and it gets worse. Played out against a backdrop of Logan's apocalyptic view of humanity we are exposed to urban life and its denizens at their gritty, powerless worst. Strube creates a world where people can survive but not without a terrible struggle. Don't worry though, there is an undercurrent of hope and the worst ones get what's coming to them.