The Campers was completely not what I expected! I had it down as a psychological thriller - it was far from that. A group of people living in a quiet street called The Drove - hence the residents called themselves the drovers - with a community park nearby, gradually had campers pitching tents, cooking fires in 44 gallon drums, loud music and parties. The drovers were not impressed. The head camper - Sholto - was a handsome man, charismatic but homeless. He was out to cause trouble - and he did.

Leah, her husband Moses and their two small children, Fleur and Harley, lived at one end of The Drove, and Leah felt a small fission of attraction to the leader. But with what was happening at the park, the police being called often, the damage done to cars and homes, and then Leah badly injured when a bottle was thrown in her direction - what would happen to the campers; to the families living in The Drove?

The Campers by Aussie author Maryrose Cuskelly was not for me. I didn't like any of the characters; couldn't get into the story - even after realising it wasn't the book I thought it was - so although I read it to the end, it didn't improve.

With thanks to NetGalley & Allen & Unwin AU for my digital ARC to read and review.

The Campers was an unexpected but wholly engrossing read. I jumped in expecting conflict, crime, drama, but instead got caught up in this simmering, discomfiting, but fascinating study of privilege, social justice and morality.

Told entirely from Leah’s perspective, I felt almost claustrophobic as I questioned her choices, and pondered on my own. The pacing is excellent, and the tension builds slowly and deliberately until it almost feels like a suburban Lord of the Flies. The writing is captivating, and author doesn’t shy away from exploring the hypocrisy that evolves in this neighbourhood dispute. The Aussie setting is beautifully and authentically described, with a feeling that that this could happen in our very backyard.

Reminiscent of The Slap and Big Little Lies, I’d recommend The Campers for anyone looking for a compelling and intriguing read.

Thank you Allen & Unwin for a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed are my own.

The Campers was such an interesting read. Leah and her family live in a lovely wee cul de sac, and have wonderful friendly neighbours. Then a group of seemingly homeless/transient people in tents set up a community in their park, and things get challenging. The campers aren’t being the best neighbours, resentment starts to build, and the permanent residents want them to move on because they are being grubby, intrusive and are starting to show quite intimidating behaviour. I loved this book, it reminded me of the times we’ve had neighbours that are loud, rough, and sometimes a bit scary. All you want when you’re at home is some peace and quiet, so I very much sympathised with Leah and her neighbours. They did show themselves to be quite entitled though, and unsympathetic towards the campers.

Non-fiction author Maryrose Cuskelly delivered her debut novel, The Cane in 2022. That book, a historical crime fiction novel, felt like it leant on her true crime writing and was as much about the community and the time and place as the crime. Her new novel, The Campers, is more of an exploration of modern Australian society. There is a little bit of crime, a some general mayhem but The Campers uses this to explore current fault lines in Australian society and culture.
Leah lives with her older husband Moses and their two young children in a hidden away dead end street which locals call The Drove. The street is a tightknit community that in itself seems to represent a cross section of Australian society, including the gay couple next door, the Indian family, the old women who raise chickens and a house for three younger renters. The world of the Drove is sent for a spin when an encampment of homeless people springs up on the reserve at the end of the street that the ‘drovers’ consider to be theirs. The residents are torn between their feelings of entitlement and their social consciences as small events start to make them resent the campers. Leah, unhappy with her life, finds herself drawn to the campers’ charismatic leader Sholto.
Cuskelly is interested in these two communities, how they make tentative attempts to understand each other, how existing prejudices and preconceived notions on both sides taint those attempts, the limits of bureaucratic or legal interventions. And then, how the situation can slide out of control particularly when it is being driven by people with particular agendas on either side. The thing that holds the narrative together is the character of Leah – believably flawed and torn between siding with her neighbours and trying to show some compassion.
The Campers is an excoriating look at the relationship between the haves and the increasing number of have nots in Australia. It is a cautionary tale as more and more places in Australia become out of reach for home ownership or even rental for many. But as a result it also feels a little didactic at times, an exploration of two sides of a debate using a worked example. And very few of the characters on either side come out of the conflict in a good light, and these are mostly the younger people. The Campers tries to present modern Australia in microcosm and in doing so delivers a cautionary tale with maybe some room for hope for the next generation.

The first line of the blurb for THE CAMPERS describes it as "An engrossing and provocative exploration of privilege, hypocrisy and justice... " which is about as perfect a description as you'd ever want. This is discomforting, confusing, and confronting reading, a story that is classified as crime fiction for unusual reasons.

The first crime, and the obvious one, in this novel is the juxtaposition of the have and the have-nots. A safe, seemingly community-orientated enclave in the inner-city, "The Drove" is an idyllic location for those privileged enough to be able to live there. A community with its own messaging group, that shares abundance of produce, social interactions, and a desire to protect the natural beauty that they live within. You'd think it was a community that had nailed coherence and cooperation, until the itinerants set up camp in the park opposite the houses.

The catalyst to the second crime is in some of the wildly varying reactions to the "campers" as they are called by the community members. The resentment, the intrigue, the attraction and the virulent hatred that slowly builds in people who, on the face of it, have everything, to those who have nothing. That's not to say there weren't triggers and noise where there is normally none, and pointless vandalism, but the explosion had been building, as they argued about their reactions to the interlopers

The second overt crime is the rioting of the campers, a loud party leading to damage and wanton destruction (and yes some animal cruelty towards defenceless chickens), at which point the simmering rage community to outsiders, turns partially inwards as well and becomes a mishmash of hatred, power playing, resentment and tension.

At the heart of all of this are Leah, her older husband Moses, their young children Fleur and Harley, and his son Miguel from his first marriage. It's this family that holds the focus throughout this novel - with an externally happy marriage, beset with suspicion, and money problems. Leah's currently a stay at home mother, obsessed, in particular, with her baby son Harley, she was a tricky customer for this reader to deal with. Conflicted by the need to return to work, paralysed by a fear of loss of connection with Harley as he goes into childcare, she's suspicious of Moses having an affair, whilst sleeping once with the "leader" of the itinerant group - an alpha male type called Sholto, who is, manipulative, and quite obviously up to something. Even the other members of the camping group are aware that Sholto is not all that he seems, and his behaviour becomes increasingly threatening and overbearing, as the "Drovers" become increasingly fraught and snippy.

Reading this novel, you'll spend a lot of time in Leah's head, which frankly, is an uncomfortable place to be. Not only younger than her husband, she's one of those impulsive, but then regretful people who float around making bad decisions, judging everybody else, panicking about the implications of people knowing what's she's done with Sholto, and just being, off-putting. While she's dithering about though, the community around her is increasingly falling apart.

THE CAMPERS isn't a traditional crime novel in that the riot and the wanton destruction is the crime. There are arrests made over that, there are repercussions and there's a community, and a marriage and family left teetering on the edge. Maybe the real crime here is the reactions of everyone. The "get rid of them regardless" versus "but they have nothing". The "not our problem" versus "they need help", the uselessness of the authorities, the lack of options, services, preparation for events like the ones that play out here. Given that homelessness, mental health, the working poor, and the lack of services and options for people who find themselves on the fringes - frequently through no fault of their own - is an increasing problem, you have to wonder what it's going to take for everyone to wake up to the ramifications of lack of funding, preparation and empathy.