After two meritorious novels in Quota and The Rules of Backyard Cricket Jock Serong steps it up a gear with On the Java Ridge, a tense and emotive thriller about Australia's policies towards asylum seekers.

This is a much weightier topic for Serong, but he tackles it with aplomb. Isi Natoli is the temporary skipper of a tour boat taking some Australian surfers out in Indonesian waters. While they are sitting out a storm in a quiet lagoon, a boatload of asylum seekers is wrecked on the reef, and suddenly Isi finds herself having to manage a disaster.

Meanwhile, back in Canberra, Cabinet Minister Cassius Calvert is pushing a hard line against boat arrivals, ratcheting Australia's already cruel policies up a notch as he privatises all dealings with asylum seekers and announces that Australia will do no rescues of damaged refugee boats.

This book is a cracking read that perfectly captures both the horror that asylum seekers face and the endless cynicism of politicians willing to trash human lives for electoral advantage. Serong's device of having Australian holiday-makers present when the refugee boat founders allows us to envisage things that the Australian government determinedly keeps secret in the sure knowledge that, if the human impact was brought to light, these policies could only result in their utter condemnation. Since we cannot visit the places they are imprisoned in, and telling us what goes on there has been criminalised, then the work of a novelist like Serong is perhaps our best way of getting to the truth. ( )

I found this book very well-written. It builds with tension and pace to the point that I just had to finish it and what an ending. It is a deeply concerning look at Australian politics and their immigration policy. One would hope this is not based on fact...
I will definitely be reading more of this author's work. ( )

Very disturbing book - sad attitude toward refugees by Australia. ( )

It is a week to the Australian Federal election, and the Prime Minister and the Minister for Border Security are emphasising the success of the government's policy on boat asylum seekers. Arrivals in Australian waters are almost unknown because all boats heading for Australia are being processed by the Indonesian authorities. Surveillance of Australian waters has been outsourced and the Australian Navy will now take no action to assist asylum seekers arriving by boat.

Two boats, very similar in design, but one much better equipped, are heading towards Australia through Indonesia. One is a surf charter boat containing Australian tourists looking for big waves to surf and the other is an Indonesian fishing boat filled with Middle Eastern refugees. That these two boats will meet is an inevitable part of the plot.

Predictably part of the plot is about how the government's new hardline policy will impact on both these boats, but my wildest dreams did not predict the ending.

The book raises some interesting scenarios among them an explanation of why so few boats have reached Ashmore Reef recently. The Prime Minister sees Cassius Calvert, Minister for Border Integrity, as a weak link, a loose cannon, although his hold on his own seat is thought to be better than that of the Prime Minister. Interesting insights into the workings of the Australian Cabinet. ( )

This is a book is slow to start with, mainly to build the characters and situations well so you understand them and their motivations as well as getting you emotionally invested.

The storyline itself is a personal, following a young Afgan refugee and her mother, the Australian co-owner of a surf charter boat based in Indonesia and the Australian immigration minister.

While the key idea explored in the book is the Australian border protection program it also shines a light on government secrecy and the use of private contractors to do the dirty work of government and to provide "plausible deniability".

The book is well written and slowly build up the tension and certainly delivers a punch in the guts ending. ( )