Elizabeth Jolley (1986)
While last year I frequently read the work of Southern writers, this year I tended to gravitate toward the Australian Outback, as evidenced by the next three books on my list. The Well is an extremely odd book about a reclusive older woman living on a sheep station. She befriends a flighty teenager who comes to stay with her, and together they live a strange isolated life, listening to the radio and dreaming up a fantasy world filled with dashing men and glamorous movie stars. One night, while returning from a dance in town, their car strikes a man on a deserted road. How the man ends up at the bottom of a well and what happens while he’s kept prisoner there make for a truly eerie tale.
