Out past the shallows, past the sandy-bottomed bays, comes the dark water—black and cold and roaring. Rolling out the invisible paths. The ancient paths to Bruny, or down south along the silent cliffs, the paths out deep to the bird islands that stand tall between nothing but water and sky. Wherever rock comes out of deep water, wherever reef rises up, there is abalone. Black-lipped soft bodies protected by shell. Treasure.
In the novel's short preface, Parrett uses poetic language and visual imagery to describe the novel's setting of Bruny, a fishing town on an island off the coast of Tasmania. Parrett's description establishes the ocean as almost a character itself within the story. Additionally, the ominous feeling evoked, contrasted with the promise of hidden treasures, sets the tone for a novel in which the ocean both gives and takes from Miles.
A shark's tooth, cold and sharp—a perfect blade. Everything that a shark was rotted and disappeared, everything but its jaw and its teeth. That was all a shark could ever leave behind.
After finding the necklace among the parts of his mother's old crashed car, Miles goes to the beach and contemplates the tooth he pulls from his pocket. Miles senses the significance of the tooth but cannot yet recall to whom it belonged. In this passage, Parrett hints at the tooth's greater significance by showing how Miles thinks of the tooth as the only remnant of the once large and living shark. By the end of the book, Miles's memory of the night Uncle Nick gave him the tooth will return, and thus the tooth will come to represent a small piece of a much greater structure.
Out past the shallows, past the sandy-bottomed bays, comes the dark water—black and cold and roaring. Rolling out an invisible path, a new line for them to follow. To somewhere warm. To somewhere new.
This passage, taken from the last page of the novel, is an echo of the novel's opening lines. However, instead of probing the depths to describe abalone, Parrett rewrites the lines to focus above the surface, where invisible paths lead to somewhere warm and new for Miles and Joe. In addition to giving the novel a sense of an ending by having it come full circle, Parrett's reconfiguration of the opening lines shows the contrast between Miles's concerns at the beginning and end of the story. No longer dependent on the abalone "treasure" in the cold and dangerous coastal water, he is free to sail to a better life with his brother Joe.
"This is for you," he said, and he put the tooth in his hands. "For luck." Miles looked up at George, his eyes full of tears. "You found him," he said. "Harry."
At the end of the novel, before they part ways, George puts the white shark-tooth necklace in Miles's hand. With this gesture, Miles realizes George must have been the one who found Harry's body; he then removed the necklace from Harry to return to Miles. In this passage, Parrett presents an instance of situational irony in which the person who happened to find Harry was the same man whom Harry had taken refuge with. The irony injects further emotional significance into the shark-tooth necklace, which now symbolizes to Miles a connection not only to Uncle Nick but to Harry as well.
And the man turned in his seat. He reached over and stroked Harry’s cheek. He looked at Miles. It was Uncle Nick.
As Miles recalls more and more of his memory of the night his mother died, he remembers that there had been a man in the car with them. In this passage, Parrett reveals that the man was Uncle Nick. With this ironic twist, the reader understands that Uncle Nick and Mum were having an affair and eloping together on the night they died.
"You remember," Dad said, and he held Miles tight. "You remember, don’t you?" ... "They were dead when I found the car." And the insides of Miles went very still. ... "She was leaving me." Dad pulled Miles in close, so close that his face was all Miles could see. And it made him sick the way Dad’s face was. The way he looked like he was crying. Like someone had done something terrible to him. "I had to take him away, Miles. I had to leave you there. He was already dead and everyone would have found out. Everyone would have known."
After pushing Harry into the water, Dad holds Miles down, preventing him from rescuing Harry, and tries to appeal to Miles. In this passage, Dad reminds Miles that he was at the scene of Mum's car crash. The line of dialogue stills Miles's insides as he tries to decipher whether his father is telling the truth. The pained expression Dad feigns sickens Miles, suggesting that he doesn't believe Dad's sorrow is authentic. Ultimately, Parrett lets the reader decide whether it is more likely that Dad murdered Nick or that he disposed of his body so that people wouldn't know Mum was leaving him for Nick.
And he cupped it in his palm—the white pointer’s tooth. "It’s his," he said, and his face went pale. "His." He let the tooth go. He stared down at Harry. "She was leaving, because of him. Because of you."
In this passage, Dad is threatening to drown Harry and pulling his hair when he discovers the necklace Uncle Nick gave to Miles and that Miles gave to Harry. Dad immediately recognizes the necklace as having belonged to Nick. He angrily admits that Mum died on the night she was leaving him to be with Nick. Crucially, Dad adds the line "Because of you," implying that Harry was Uncle Nick's biological son.
Harry squeezed his eyes shut like he was waiting to be hit, but Dad didn’t move. He just kept staring into Harry’s face. Everything went quiet then. Dad went quiet and the whole place went quiet like there was nothing. No wind, no rustling trees, no sound from the river. Just Dad holding Harry up off the ground. And his face was dead and his eyes were dead and Miles felt sick. But then he let Harry go. He just put Harry down and he walked away.
After nearly running Harry down on the road next to George's property, Dad pulls over and grabs Harry, demanding to know what he was doing at George's. In this passage, Miles watches helplessly as he anticipates Dad's violence. However, in an instance of situational irony, Dad drops Harry without a word. However, the sudden deescalation makes sense once the reader learns of Dad's plan to take Harry out on the boat as punishment. Showing his true cruelty, Dad lulls Harry and Miles into a sense of security before delivering a more psychologically damaging and dangerous punishment.
Then the man said, "We’re from Fisheries. Your dad’s license is not valid. Unpaid fines and a long list of infringements. We need to speak with him."
Dad's illegal abalone poaching catches up with him when fisheries officials come by the house. However, the person who answers the door is Harry. The fisheries official treats Harry with suspicion and hostility, and Harry knows to lie to authority figures, saying he is only home alone because his aunt is coming to pick him up. In this passage, the fisheries official takes advantage of Harry's innocence by inappropriately talking about the trouble Dad is in with the law. Harry hears the official describe the home as a "shithole" before he drives off, a line that suggests the official has contempt for Harry's family's poverty and thus feels entitled to provoke Harry's anxiety about the license infraction despite Harry having no control over what his father does.
Miles looked out to the water. Perfect three-foot glass, empty and waiting and no wind yet. Not yet. And he couldn’t believe he was going to give up clean waves for this, for Harry. But he was going to. He’d already put his board down on the sand.
At the end of the novel, Miles goes back in his mind to the first scene in the book, when he asks Harry to try to find a shark egg on the beach to keep him busy while Miles and Joe surf. As soon as he says it, he realizes it will take Harry ages to find one because he never looks in the right places. In this passage, Miles decides not to surf but instead to find a shark egg that he can plant for Harry to find. With this passage, Parrett demonstrates how Miles so often puts Harry's needs over his own, from small gestures such as this, to his greater efforts over the novel to protect his vulnerable little brother.
