The Precipice

What happens when an obsession takes over and there is no one to hold you back?

Thea Farmer, a reclusive and difficult retired school principal, lives in isolation with her dog in the Blue Mountains. Her distinguished career ended under a cloud over a decade earlier, following a scandal involving a much younger male teacher. After losing her savings in the financial crash, she is forced to sell the dream house she had built for her old age and live on in her dilapidated cottage opposite.

Initially resentful and hostile towards Frank and Ellice, the young couple who buy the new house, Thea develops a flirtatious friendship with Frank, and then a grudging affinity with his twelve-year-old niece, Kim, who lives with them. Although she has never much liked children, Thea discovers a gradual and wholly unexpected bond with the half-Vietnamese Kim, a solitary, bookish child from a troubled background.

Her growing sympathy with Kim propels Thea into a psychological minefield. Finding Frank's behaviour increasingly irresponsible, she becomes convinced that all is not well in the house. Unsettling suspicions, which may or may not be irrational, begin to dominate her life, and build towards a catastrophic climax.

Reading Group Book Questions

1. On the face of it,Thea Farmer could be described as difficult, curmudgeonly and unpleasant, but would this be accurate? Did you find her sympathetic or unsympathetic? As you read the book, did your opinion of her change?
2. Do you think Thea learnt anything from the tragic end to her teaching career? Are those character flaws which contributed to that scandal still evident in her personality?
3. Did you have a sneaking affection for Frank Campbell or, like Thea, did you find his behaviour increasingly inexcusable? Or perhaps, both?
4. This action, in Thea’s eyes, is a moral choice, and she can see no alternative. Moreover, she is going to get away with it. She is determined not to repeat the terrible mistakes of her past. Given this, should what Thea does be considered a crime?
5. The precipice is a crucial landscape formation in the book. What symbolic purposes does it serve?

About the Author

Virginia Duigan wrote the screenplay of the 1998 movie The Leading Man, starring Jon Bon Jovi, Thandie Newton and Barry Humphries. Before becoming a novelist, Duigan worked as a journalist, broadcaster, editor and TV scriptwriter. She was a regular feature writer on The National Times, and contributed documentaries to ABC radio. She was a freelance contributor to The Bulletin, The Age, The Australian, The Financial Review, Cinema Papers, and in London to the The Observer and The Times. She was Literary Editor of The National Times, and a theatre, book, film and restaurant reviewer. The Precipice is her third novel, after Days Like These and The Biographer.