Mantle

Image credit: Amazon

Part of the human condition is having the need to identify and label something so as to be better prepared for the type of experience you're about to have. This is why we love genre. When you go into a cinema to see a rom-com or horror movie, you are armed with the security of an unspoken generic contract; you’re going to experience warm and fuzzy feelings during the rom-com, anticipation and anxiety during the horror, etc. While genre and its contracts are present in literature, the security is not quite as apparent and there are many authors who deliberately muddle and mix the building blocks of genre to create new experiences for the reader. The blurb of a book can only give so much forewarning and often, the book will turn out to be way different to what you expected from the summary on the back. Case in point, Romy Ash’s Mantle.

Ursula travels to the cold and scenic wilds of lutruwita/Tasmania to be with her ailing more who is suffering from a strange and mysterious illness. What began as a rash has turned into something dangerous. And now Ursula has it too. With the illness spreading across the island and beyond, Ursula finds herself stranded in her mother’s house, entangled in a relationship with a younger man she met at the pub, and finding solace in the unknowable, wildness of nature. But just like her, nature is changing, shifting, and turning into something else.

My initial thoughts upon reading the blurb were that this was going to be some sort of eco-horror, dystopian, contagion novel with heavy allusions and allegories to Covid, global warming, and the ways in which humans have destroyed the planet. And to an extent it is. The most intriguing thing about this book is the way in which Ash writes about horrific events but, rather than layer on the drama, doom-and-gloom, and scariness of the scenario in which the protagonist finds herself, the book reads as a tranquil journey of metamorphosis. Ash is an amazingly transportive writer: when you’re reading her descriptions of the pebbly beach or the windy, woody bushland, you can hear the wind, taste the salt, and feel the hard smoothness underfoot. The enrapture of Mantle is not in the story it’s telling or the scenes it describes, but in the sensory feelings it prompts as well as the many ideas and messages about the natural world and the nature of humankind that lines its pages.

Image credit: Melbourne Writers' Festival

Like a few of the books I have read in book club, this is not a story I would have picked for myself. And I certainly struggled with it in the beginning, as it did not read like the dystopian horror I had intoned from the blurb. The pace is slow and sauntering even though it's describing some truly disturbing things and the evolution of the narrative and acceptance of the reader is so gradual that it’s hard to pinpoint just where in the book I started to power through the pages. I guess this is reflective of the nature themes; ever-changing and sometimes going unnoticed.

Mantle is a truly provocative read. It’s one of the few books that I have been left feeling confused as to whether I liked it or not. Perhaps it warrants a second reading? Looks like I might need to keep it on the shelf next to Arborescence.

Author: Romy Ash, 2026

Published: Ultimo Press, an imprint of Hardie Grant Publishing, 2026