The Near Miss
Fran Cusworth
Twelftree Press, $25
Set in Melbourne, The Near Miss follows three strangers who meet through a narrowly averted road accident. Grace, a harried mother who wants another child but worries about her family's debt, her partner's flakiness, and the demands of her toddler will torpedo the idea. Eddy, a cynical risk analyst, has his life blighted by his inability to stop viewing his personal life through the actuarial prism of his work. Melody, a hippie who's moved to the city to raise her young son, without compromising her communitarian values and optimistic worldview. The novel has its points, but Fran Cusworth struggles to unify these disparate stories without stretching the narrative fabric into implausible shapes. And her characters aren't always written with the precision that might avoid making the novel's thematic resonance look contrived.