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A Touch of Quirkiness
In The Meeting Place, a community fights for survival following an environmental disaster and a devastating public health crisis that tears three friends apart. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The context of the story – an environmental crisis and a pandemic -are what we already live with a slight increase in factors that could possibly happen over the next few years or decade. I have always had a fear of mass round-ups and I wanted to explore the hypothetical situation of adding in a round-up of community members in the Northern Rivers, within the backdrop of devastating drought.
I chose to look at this scenario from the point of view of 3 different characters each landing in different places and with their unique strengths and weaknesses that would come to play in their survival. The three characters could be said to represent different parts of myself but also different parts of our community.
Did you plan the tone and direction of the novel before writing, or did it come out organically as you were writing?
I was compelled to write this story. It would nag and nag at me to be written until I committed to it and even then it took several years. I had no ideas beyond the initial hypothetical and the three characters. The rest of the story only emerged as I put pen to paper, with my left hand. That said the dark tone with a touch of quirkiness was somewhat intentional, as well as a slight exaggeration to characters and the context as well. Stretching truths a bit, I saw it in my mind as a film and that is how it revealed itself to me, frame by frame. To tell you the truth it was quite a gruelling, challenging writing process. I would become so frustrated about the lack of knowing where the story was going. I had to learn to be patient and to trust that when I picked up the pen the words would appear, voila!, just like that.
The style of the book is quite choppy, the way our thoughts and flashes of memories of disaster times can be. Some people would probably like more backstory about the baddies but that part of the story was not available to me, or perhaps that just does not interest me that much. Who does it and why… not as interesting as how the community survives and stands up eventually and overcomes.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
I am working on the sequel now.
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With the pulse of a thriller, The Meeting Place is a dystopian place-based novel about ordinary people confronted by extreme circumstances.
The Meeting Place
Ruth Rosenhek’s The Meeting Place is a gripping dystopian novel that blends climate catastrophe, government overreach, and human resilience into a tense and emotional narrative. Set in a near-future Australia ravaged by environmental disasters and public health crises, the story follows Gale, Lis, and Sara—three women navigating a world where civil liberties have been stripped away under the guise of public safety. As the government enforces mass detainments in high-tech quarantine facilities, the characters are thrust into a desperate struggle for survival, autonomy, and truth. With a haunting sense of realism, the novel explores themes of resistance, friendship, and the terrifying ease with which democratic societies can descend into authoritarian control.
One of the strongest aspects of the novel is its unrelenting tension. From the very first pages, when Sara barely escapes a collapsing bridge during a flash flood, the story grips you and doesn’t let go. The novel’s pacing is relentless, mirroring the anxiety and helplessness of its characters. The most striking scene for me was Gale’s forced detainment, the sheer horror of being rounded up, stripped of agency, and subjected to involuntary medical procedures is chilling. Rosenhek’s writing style is vivid and immersive, making it easy to feel Gale’s panic as she is injected with a paralytic serum and implanted with a tracking chip. It’s disturbing in the best way, leaving me unsettled long after I put the book down.
The character development is another standout feature. Lis, the artist who initially shrugs off government control in favor of focusing on her creative work, undergoes one of the most compelling transformations. Her slow realization that she has been willfully ignorant adds a layer of depth to the story. The moment she chooses to save a lost toddler instead of escaping unscathed is incredibly moving, and it highlights her innate compassion and recklessness. Rosenhek does a fantastic job of making these characters feel like real people, flawed and messy but ultimately relatable. David, Lis’s son, also deserves mention, his survival instincts, shaped by generational trauma, make for some of the most harrowing and heart-wrenching moments in the book.
The novel’s social commentary is sharp and unsettlingly prescient. The depiction of a society where crises are used to justify increasing surveillance and authoritarian measures feels terrifyingly plausible. The “Public Order Department” and its blacked-out transport buses are reminiscent of historical and contemporary crackdowns on civil liberties. The eeriest part? The way ordinary people just accept it, because resisting seems futile. The slow boil of control, where citizens willingly trade freedom for perceived safety, is executed masterfully. It’s impossible not to draw parallels to real-world events, making the book feel like both a warning and a prophecy.
I highly recommend The Meeting Place to anyone who enjoys dystopian fiction with a social conscience. If you liked The Handmaid’s Tale or 1984, this book will hit hard. It’s gripping, emotional, and alarmingly relevant. Readers who enjoy character-driven stories with high stakes and moral dilemmas will find themselves hooked. Be prepared, though, it’s not an easy read. It will make you uncomfortable, it will make you think, and it will stay with you long after you’ve finished the final page. But in a world where truth is often stranger than fiction, perhaps stories like this are exactly what we need.
Pages: 235 | ASIN : B0DWRBVD41
LITERARY TITAN 