Matthew Walker travels to a small country town to restart his life after being a conscripted to fight in the Vietnam War. He is looking for somewhere to belong and for peace-of-mind. He quickly learns that being an outsider makes this more difficult than expected. He drifts into the orbit of other outsiders, including fellow musicians. They form a pub band, The Cutters. It becomes an identity, an antidote to ostracism and with a little help from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky a road, just maybe, to redemption... and love.
The Cutters is a life-change story, backdropped by the harshness and social inequities of rural life at the start of the collapse of Australia's wool industry in the 1970s. Slipping into history with this cultural and economic juggernaut was a sizeable part of the national identity, and for many small country towns, security.
For young people, especially in rural society, daring to challenge authority, daring to break from long-established social hierarchies and convention, made it a time of uncertainty, fear, wry humour and grim pathos. Change was happening and change can be exciting, liberating, confusing and tragic in equal measure.
This I observed, quietly, not fully understanding the currents of influence around me, when I worked for a year on a small town newspaper in the Great Southern region of Western Australia in the mid-1970s. I also house-shared with a journalist, just a few years older than me, deeply disturbed by his experience as a conscript in the Vietnam War ... or what the Vietnamese more correctly call, The American War. If anyone is interested in the truth about that conflict I encourage reading Christopher Hitchens's book, 'The Trial of Henry Kissinger'.
For me, that period was all part of the foundation being laid for a life ahead and this is what the central character, Matthew Walker, is achieving, or hopes he is achieving. It might take a sequel for him to fully realise... .
The Prairies Book Review August 2025
Spare, unsentimental, and deeply resonant; a layered portrait of resilience.
Collis’s latest is a quietly powerful novel of postwar survival set against the harsh beauty of rural Western Australia. Two years after returning from Vietnam, Matthew Walker is still caught in the war’s undertow. The life he left behind has shifted without him, and his place in it feels lost. Hoping to rebuild, he heads to Hammond, a small farming town, to work for the Hammond Herald. A blown tyre on the way leads to his first meeting with Pete Glencross, a weathered share farmer whose fight is with the land, the markets, and the wealthy graziers who shape the district’s fate.
Collis draws Hammond with an unsentimental eye. The town’s social order is fixed, its hierarchies inherited along with acreage. Fitting in demands the same tactical awareness Matthew learned in the army—alliances are sealed over beer and football loyalties, and stepping out of place can carry a cost. Through Pete’s blunt talk, Matthew comes to see the slow erasure of small farms under the “get big or get out” mantra, a policy enriching a few while hollowing the rest. Collis layers this with a quieter history—the absence of the Aboriginal people, their story erased, mirroring other silences the town prefers to keep. Collis’s prose is spare and the dialogue steeped in rural rhythms. The novel ends without tidy closure. Matthew does not fully breach Hammond’s social walls, nor leave the past behind. But he endures, and in Collis’s world, that is its own kind of victory.
Taut, understated, and raw, this is a winner.
The Book Life July 2025
https://booklife.com/project/the-cutters-101698
Just two years out from serving in Vietnam, Matthew Walker still fights the demons of war inside his mind, while marveling that, in his absence, the world has “moved on and he ha[s] lost his place.” Seeking solace—and a renewed purpose—he ventures to Australia’s small town of Hammond, hoping for a job as a reporter with the Hammond Herald. As he navigates the challenges of being an outsider, Matthew forms unlikely friendships, joins a local band called The Cutters, and uncovers dark secrets about the town’s history.
Collis (The Soul Stone) intertwines personal redemption, community, and the weight of historical truth into a bittersweet journey of self-discovery and resilience. Matthew’s struggle to integrate into Hammond highlights the rigid social hierarchies and unspoken rules that govern relationships and allegiances, and Collis skillfully captures the tension that can separate insiders and outsiders in rural communities. Local journalist Patricia Stewart—and the Henderson family—form more intensive connections with Matthew, and their evolution underscores the town’s deep-seated power dynamics as well as the challenges of defying societal expectations. Meanwhile, Matthew’s Inner Voice—“his constant, disagreeable, companion”—offers an additional invitation for readers to reflect on acceptance and identity.
The book’s exploration of historical injustice, particularly in the discovery of a potential massacre site of Indigenous peoples, is both compelling and unsettling, as Collis raises important questions about the erasure of Indigenous histories and the moral responsibility of uncovering the truth. The narrative occasionally falters when fully addressing the implications of those revelations, leaving some threads unresolved, but Matthew’s camaraderie with The Cutters provides a refreshing counterpoint to such weighty themes, with their journey to the Battle of the Sounds competition serving as a testament to the healing power of music and friendship. Overall, this is a richly layered, emotive novel blending personal and historical narratives, as well as a thought-provoking tale of redemption and belonging.
Takeaway: Thought-provoking 1970s tale of identity, belonging, and purpose.
Comparable Titles: Diane Chamberlain’s The Last House on the Street, James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.