Title: The Farm
Author: Jessica Mansour-Nahra
Publisher: Hachette Australia, 2025; RRP $32.99
Review: Rhonda Cotsell, Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group
The author
Jessica Mansour-Nahra has worked previously as a communications consultant and writer in various locations around the world and holds degrees in History and Law from the University of Queensland. The Farm is her first novel.
The book
Leila and James have suffered through multiple IVF attempts before a final success ends in the tragedy of a heartbeat lost. Leila must then undergo an operation to make conception again possible after which, to recuperate and improve the chances of conceiving again, they move to his parents’ farm, thinking peace from the city and fresh air will help.
Leila initially finds the house beautiful but slightly oppressive. Described as classically beautiful it is also unusually unkempt, some of the interior showing contradictory signs of age and wear. There is a rear screen door, which cannot be locked, leading out to an area littered with rubbish and a small, heavily locked shed, the purpose of which is not disclosed.
To offset the isolation there are other farms within view albeit distant whose owners James takes pains to introduce Leila to so she might feel less alone. There is also a nearby small town for non-urgent supplies that they visit and socialise in together and with locals.
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Leila’s body is still recovering from the operation and she is often in pain. Throughout there are frequent references to a cocktail of painkillers that she takes, often washed down with wine. This concerns the sometimes overly solicitous James. She eats what he considers to be too little but also shares pleasant evenings cooking for and with James.
Her unease and physical condition do not prevent her from exploring the farm and surrounding bushland, taking long walks daily on the advice of her doctor. Her moods and some of her behaviour seem erratic and a little difficult to grasp initially, but there are understandable reasons as the story unfolds. Her and James’s relationship was understandably strained, for example, by their mutual grief, her state of health, the fact they are spending more time together than usual, and their differing relationship with the farm itself and his albeit absent parents to whom he is devoted and who moved away in order for James and Leila to have privacy.
There is an overhanging unease about the house, James, and his absent parents, but the effect is diluted by awareness of potential exaggeration by the many drugs – to which James – more comfortable in this environment which is his, not hers – objects vigorously. And it is never quite clear – given the story is told through her eyes – whether the general weirdness is drug induced or the result of James pressuring her when she is actually in pain.
Although their isolation is presented in a way both claustrophobic and overwhelming, I enjoyed the details of bushland and open spaces. Apart from bringing a sense of bushland and country into the reading, the depictions of their surroundings in its narrative role as background captures both its muted and slightly otherworldly eeriness and its beauty.
…a serpentine stream banked by sandy clay, disappearing into thick trees. The water is clear and I see shimmering rocks, mottled plants and sticks beneath the surface. The sound is gentle as the water laps against and plops over the rocks
These passages of description are on the surface of it pleasing, creating in the reader’s mind an environment alive and familiar, not something entirely forbidding despite perhaps the ‘serpentine’ nature of the stream. There are however distinctly unsettling moments in her daily walks. There is, for example, the terribly rank smell from a strange concrete structure – purpose unknown – in the bush, and the brief sighting of what seemed to be a stranger’s face disappearing amongst the trees. During a raging storm a terrified woman screams and claws at a window.
These Gothic elements are set within a cast of ordinary, everyday characters engaged in usual farm work and leisure activities among which the two fill their days. Some small inaccuracies of farm work pulled me out of full immersion from time to time but overall the smells, sounds, sights and activities of a country farm with country neighbours and friends was realistically conveyed.
The locals are drawn with a broad brush, and there is an enjoyable depiction of the characteristics and behaviour of the dog who accompanies and comforts Leila. Leila and James’ relationship, which, despite Leila’s growing paranoia also infecting her trust of James, is also convincing. Their separate suffering and struggles to adapt to what is happening in their lives as both individual and as partner reads as warm and painfully real.
Was Leila bordering on physical and emotional collapse due to her health and the death of her unborn child and the fear or never conceiving another, or, given the constant reference to pills and alcohol, simply the slightly unhinged mind of someone self medicating while struggling to retain emotional equilibrium?
It is through Leila’s eyes that the story unfolds, and the claustrophobic setting and hallucinogenic edge of her response to her situation successfully created a dramatic tension that kept this reader on edge to the end.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
