R omy Ash’s debut novel, Floundering , has sat on my bookshelf since the Sydney Morning Herald, where I worked as literary editor, named her as one of the best young Australian novelists in 2013 – the year she was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin literary award among others.

The Australian author Cate Kennedy wrote of the neglected young brothers in Floundering: “These boys are so real you will lie awake worrying about them” – words so true that I still feel anxious for them.

Like everyone who saw Ash’s talent, I’ve been waiting for the next novel while she did academic work, published essays and a children’s book, raised her own children, lost loved ones and watched Earth’s health decline.

All that living has gone into Mantle, a more complex novel of ideas that shares DNA with Floundering, in an exquisitely wild, watery depiction of humans and nature under pressure.

Mantle is set on the coast of south-eastern Tasmania, where 50-year-old Ursula comes to see her dying mother at her clifftop house…