The Restorer | Michael Sala
After a year apart, Maryanne returns to her husband, Roy, bringing their eight-year-old son Daniel and teenage daughter Freya with her. The family move from Sydney to Newcastle, where Roy has bought a derelict house on the coast. As Roy painstakingly patches the holes in the floorboards and plasters over cracks in the walls, Maryanne believes, for a while, that they can rebuild a life together. But Freya doesnt want a fresh startshe just wants outand Daniel drifts around the sprawling, run-down house in a dream, infuriating his father, who soon forgets the promises he has made. Some cracks can never be smoothed over, and tension grows between Roy and Maryanne until their uneasy peace is rupturedwith devastating consequences. Michael Sala was born in the Netherlands in 1975 to a Greek father and a Dutch mother, and first came to Australia in the 1980s. He lives in Newcastle. His critically acclaimed debut, The Last Thread, won the 2013 NSW Premier's Award for New Writing and was the regional winner (Pacific) of the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize. There is so much to praise about this book. Michael Salas prose is clear and unadorned, the setting exquisitely rendered, but it is the characters - Freya, Maryanne, Roy and Daniel - all of them flawed and complex and deeply, deeply human, who will stay with me for a very long time. I would defy anyone to read their story and remain unmoved. The Restorer is an incredibly powerful novel and, I believe, an important one. Hannah Kent Michael Sala is a sensitive, perceptive observer of human relationships and I have long admired his work. The Restorer is a beautifully written novel about growing up, starting againand how the riptide of personal history can pull us further and further from safety, no matter how hard we fight. Charlotte Wood A wise and timely novel that builds and breaks like a summer stormjust as beautiful, just as brutal. Fiona McFarlane Salas story of mundane domestic tension explodes in ways both already anticipated and powerfully surprising. The narrative is real, compelling, sophisticated and deeply human. Having read this work, I will certainly seek out Salas debut novel, and watch with interest for new works from this gifted creator. Strongly recommended. 4ZZZ This is powerful, poetic, extraordinary fiction...Sala never falters. Australian Unputdownable...Sala creates an atmosphere of simmering tension with an undercurrent of unpredictability that seeps into every exchange. [He] is a brilliant writer. Saturday Paper Closely observed, with the visceral force of truth, Michael Salas heartbreaking novel captures the tender hope of love and its terrible cost. Kathryn Heyman Recommended for readers of literary fiction who appreciate exploring the darker realities of Australian life now and in our not-so-distant past. Books + Publishing Salas account is sophisticated and shows the immense complexity of relationships. Good Reading Salas second novel is assured and polished and adds potency to the outcry against domestic violence. Herald Sun Michael Salas beautifully shaped second novel glows with all the complicated pain and joy of being human...A tremendous depth of insight and compassion on the part of the writer informs the three main characters...The reader knows pain is coming but the power and deep humanity of Salas writing defies the instinct to look away. SA Weekend Domestic violence is an everyday reality for tens of thousands of women in Australia. Recent horrors and public campaigns have raised awareness of this social scourge. Journalists have written extensively on the subject, yet it is novelists, as Michael Sala shows in The Restorer, that can gives us a more acute view of the emotional complexities that bind couples and keep women in threatening domestic situations. Australian Book Review A slow burning work of fiction that moves with troubling intensity and sensitivity to give an insiders account of a violent marriage. Sydney Morning Herald Michael Sala has a rare gift: in prose that takes your breath away, he tells a story of heart-rending sorrow without a trace of sentimentality. Raimond Gaita on The Last Thread The Restorer is a beautifully written and very powerful fiction that not only shines a light on the deep roots of domestic violence but also plays with the line of what remains in the face of such destruction. Salas story will stay with the reader long after the book is finished. Compulsive Reader This is a sensitively rendered novel with a fine eye for emotional and physical detail. The questions it raises are as disturbing as they are compelling. Sydney Morning Herald Now, Im not self-promoting here, but I will be on stage [at Sydney Writers Festival] with Newcastle writer Michael Sala. Indeed, the only person Im promoting is Sala, as his unsettling family novel The Restorer is superb. Stephen Romei, Australian His style is spare and direct, as if parading its lack of trickiness and fanfare; but underneath it swells a great, unwieldy tide of emotion. Overland The Restorer is a powerful, emotionally charged and thought provoking book. Pile by the Bed Michael Sala taps into the tension and fear of the times to help build the mood...The cracks are widening long before the earth moves in this novel of a family locked into patterns of violence. Australian Womens Weekly The Restorer is a powerful, emotionally charged and thought provoking book. Yet again shining a light on a pervasive strain in Australian society, Sala effectively builds the tension based on a certain fatalistic inevitability. The storm was always coming and it was always going to break. PS News
The Restorer | 
