Highway 13
by Fiona McFarlane

reviewed by Wendy Tucker

This is the fourth book of fiction from the amazing Fiona McFarlane and her second book of short stories. Her first novel, The Night Guest, was short-listed for the Miles Franklin award in 2013 and now Highway 13 is shortlisted for this award in 2025. By the time this review is published, the winner will have been announced but, at time of writing, I’m still hoping Highway 13 wins. It’s my favourite. And that’s unusual because I’m not a fan of the short story form. I prefer the immersion of a novel. But for McFarlane I’m delighted to read anything she writes.

The short stories are all linked by connections to a serial murder, some close, some distant and circumstantial. McFarlane has loosely used the ‘Backpacker murderer’, Ivan Milat, to centre the stories. This sounds grim but McFarlane is not interested in the man, the crime nor the violence. There is neither crime nor violence in these stories. She is looking at the ripple effect, the connections we make and the stories we tell.

Each beautifully crafted story is dated but they are not in chronological order and the setting roams around from far north Australia to the killer’s hometown, to Rome and Texas. McFarlane’s murderer is called Joe Biga but we never meet him. The characters range from an Englishman who has been transported to Texas and his memories of his murdered sister while feeling distressed by the American celebration of Halloween. There is Biga’s elderly neighbour watching his family home as it is demolished while he is being interviewed by a reporter. A political candidate is cooking democracy sausages and feeling disadvantaged because he coincidentally shares the same surname as the murderer. An inner-city trendy couple help a distressed young woman backpacker from the nearby youth hostel and they have a story to tell and retell. A nun leads a group of adolescent students to Rome; while in another story an actor dons a fat suit to play a serial killer and worries that he will never get another role.

The stories are all in different styles, with different characters, different times and in different settings and all are complete masterpieces.

There are twelve stories in Highway 13. Perhaps there is one that can’t be told.