Circling the Crime

What really happened? Mary Swan is an accomplished short story writer, whose best work plumbs the depths of such simple remarks. In The Boys in the Trees, her debut novel, Swan gives her preoccupation with history, in particular the gap between lived experience and documentary evidence, a sinister twist. Unlike her previous, often female, protagonists, William Heath, the central if silent figure in The Boys in the Trees, is a criminal. A proud, impoverished father who keeps to himself, one fine day Heath murders his wife and children and then runs off, only to be discovered later, alone in the neighbouring woods. So far, so melodramatic. But by choosing not to narrate the murders or enter the consciousness of Heath himself, Swan deftly shifts the focus outward, on to what came before and after, all the while implying the horrific nature of Heath’s crime and the concentric circles of secondary suffering that expand out around it, with the same calm tone and...