Book Review: Whiskey Charlie Foxtrot by Annabel Smith

There are a lot of problems with working above a bookstore. Particularly when said bookstore is wee and independent and rich in range. Recently my lunch breaks have found me losing myself in the aisles, starry eyed staring at the litany of brightly coloured book spines and familiar names. That's how I found Whiskey Charlie Foxtrot, some bright, yellow spine amongst a sea of darker, duller things. I was gripped by the title alone, and then by the promise of an Australian author I hadn't read before in Annabel Smith.

 So, premise.

Charlie and Whiskey are identical twins who couldn't be more different. Whiskey is successful, assertive, brash and superficial whilst Charlie is quiet, resentful, insecure and a total commitmentphobe. They haven't spoken in years when Whiskey is put into a coma after being hit by a car, an incident which causes Charlie to reassess his relationship with his brother and the issues between them to be brought into an unforgiving light.

Whiskey Charlie Foxtrot is sort of an interesting experiment in structure. Each chapter is broken up into a letter from the phonetic alphabet, sometimes to the success of the story but more often to the detriment of it. Characters are introduced pointedly, themes are explored too superficially and as soon as you're drawn into one part of the story you're shunted to a different letter, era, character. The whole thing is fragmented, giving you snapshots of a life between two brothers and a world that tends to exist like an airsac, alternating between big and full and collapsed and empty. The two brothers are the crux of all of this, but we get such a limited version of Whiskey, knowing him only through the eyes of the bitter, biting Charlie, that sometimes it feels even less than that. This world is Charlie, and other factors are fleeting. 

That aside, there's a lot to like in this book. The supporting cast in particular is full of vibrancy. I loved Rosa, Whiskey's wife and Marco, Charlie's best friend. All of the kids are great too, whimsical and real. Aunt Audrey is horribly underutilised and many of the nurses at the hospital are compelling, even in their brief page-time.

There are a few scenes too that I don't think I'll ever forget - particularly one early in the novel about schoolboys photocopying pages of The Delta of Venus to distribute as porn through the schoolyard, or a later one where Charlie escapes a particularly awful girlfriend to listen to records in a lock-up. It's these scenes that enrich and enliven the world of Whiskey Charlie Foxtrot and make me keen for Smith's next work.

3.5/5