42 pages • 1 hour read
Exiles
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Chapters 33-40Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 33 Summary
As Falk takes Gemma back to the festival, she listens to a voicemail from Raco asking when she saw Kim last. Falk kisses her, and they part. Falk finds Raco and asks about the call to Gemma. Raco assures Falk he called everyone. No one saw Kim in person for about a year before last year’s festival. Kim had been drifting away from everyone in Marralee. As they walk through the festival, Falk notices Eva waving at a train for kids even though she doesn’t know anyone riding it. The riders wave back. Falk waves to people on the Ferris wheel, and several wave back. He begins to question what he saw last year when he thought he saw Kim on the Ferris wheel.
Chapter 34 Summary: “Kim”
This chapter is from Kim’s perspective. She thinks back to when she fell in love with Charlie at 15 years old. Then, she sees Rohan at Dean’s funeral but doesn’t take him up on his suggestion that they meet in Adelaide. After Charlie and Kim break up, she moves to Adelaide with Zara for a graphic design job. Zara begs to return to Marralee. Kim runs into Rohan, and they begin seeing each other. When Kim tells Charlie about the new relationship, Charlie says Rohan is not a good choice.
Kim announces she is going to marry Rohan. After the wedding, Kim allows Zara to return to Marralee to live with Charlie. Charlie and Kim discuss Zara attending the party on the festival’s opening night. Kim thinks back on being there as a teenager after fighting with Charlie. She drank so much after seeing Charlie with another girl that she blacked out and only vaguely remembers someone saying “relax” and touching her. The following morning, she shared this memory with Naomi and asked her not to tell anyone. However, Kim agrees to Zara attending the party.
Kim starts to struggle at her job in Adelaide. Rohan begins to express unhappiness every time Kim talks to Naomi or others from Marralee, saying he doesn’t want their conversations to get back to Charlie. Kim begins to ignore calls and texts to keep Rohan happy. Kim starts being late for work.
Kim begins taking medication for her sadness and stress. She quits her job and is given more drugs by her doctor. When she begins to look for a new job, she discovers she is pregnant with Zoe. After Zoe is born, Rohan thinks the baby looks like Charlie. They argue about her paternity the day before the Marralee festival, and he mentions that she got blackout drunk at that party years before. Rohan claims Charlie told him about her blackout, but Kim never told Charlie. When they are driving to Marralee, Charlie calls Kim. Enraged, Rohan threatens to kill Zoe by running the car off the road. Then, Rohan turns off the road heading toward a lookout.
Chapter 35 Summary
Returning to the present, Falk tells Raco and Dwyer his theory that Kim was not at the festival the night she disappeared. Falk explains that seeing Eva wave at strangers and strangers wave back made him realize that the woman he saw on the Ferris wheel wasn’t Kim. Falk recalls running into Rohan at the lookout the previous year and realizes he might have killed Kim there before they arrived at the festival.
Chapter 36 Summary: “Rohan”
This chapter is from Rohan’s perspective, picking up where Kim’s chapter left off. He drives them to the lookout and tells Kim to get out of the car. Rohan thinks back to when he had a crush on Kim as a teenager, but she chose to be with Charlie. During the party where she got drunk after a fight with Charlie, Rohan lead Kim away from the others. He started to touch her but heard Naomi coming, so he hid. Rohan hoped Naomi would leave so he could get back to his assault, but she rescued Kim.
At the lookout, he grabs her and smothers her against his chest. When she goes limp, he tosses her into the bush below the lookout. Rohan thinks over his plan, which involves leaving Zoe at the festival and planting Kim’s shoe at the reservoir.
Chapter 37 Summary
The authorities find Kim’s body below the lookout. Falk and Raco walk around the reservoir with Zara as she processes her mother’s death. The family gathers at the lookout for a private memorial. Charlie offers Falk a job at the vineyard. Falk and Joel paint Dean’s memorial plaque. As they finish, Gemma joins them.
Chapter 38 Summary: “Six Months Later”
In the six months following the discovery of Kim’s body, Falk takes the job at Charlie’s vineyard and moves into the guesthouse, then into Gemma’s cottage. He enjoys taking her dog for walks and working at the vineyard. Every six weeks, Raco, Rita, and their kids visit Marralee for a barbecue. Zoe is put in foster care, and Charlie is working on getting custody. Naomi and Shane begin dating again. Falk joins the local football team with Shane. Joel goes to university and begins dating a girl named Molly, whom he brings home for the barbecue. Falk and Gemma look at Joel’s piece of barrier with paint on it from the scene of Dean’s accident. Falk realizes that the paint color matches Dwyer’s office.
Chapter 39 Summary
Falk goes to see Dwyer and presents the paint samples, which match Dwyer’s office walls. Falk realizes that Dwyer concealed his daughter killing Dean in a car accident by covering the paint left by her car with the other color. Dwyer admits to it and says he never told his wife or anyone else. His daughter, Caitlin, wanted to tell Gemma and Joel, but Dwyer wouldn’t let her. Dwyer feels guilty about his actions.
Chapter 40 Summary
Falk tells Gemma about Caitlin, and Dwyer leaves the police force. Raco and Rita visit the same weekend that Joel brings Molly home for the first time. Falk and Gemma wait until after the weekend to tell everyone about Dwyer. When Raco brings gifts from Kiewarra, Falk talks about making plans to visit and puts the appointment in his planner. Falk says he won’t leave the vineyard to take Dwyer’s position. He feels content with his life in Marralee.
Chapters 33-40 Analysis
In the final section, the limited third-person perspective moves from Falk to Kim and Rohan. This structural change offers another look at events. Falk was with Charlie when Charlie called Kim the day Rohan killed her. His perspective on the call can be contrasted with Kim’s. Her perspective includes Rohan’s abuse because he “thought Zoe was Charlie’s baby” (328). These passages illustrate the theme of Perception and Reality, as the different characters’ perspectives all present radically different perceptions of reality. Falk assumed he was overhearing a mundane conversation about logistics between ex-spouses. In truth, it was the prologue to Kim’s murder.
The theme of Perception and Reality culminates with the realization that Kim was never at the festival. Rohan used people’s perceptions against them, giving them enough information to make it seem like Kim was there. The phrase “We see what we expect to see” (285) is repeated to emphasize that people saw Kim at the festival because they expected to. The reality is that Rohan killed her at the lookout before going to the festival. Falk regrets his misperception: “I shouldn’t have taken what I saw at face value” (316). Falk thought she was at the top of the Ferris wheel because he expected to see her there.
In the mystery of who killed Dean, the theme of Perception and Reality culminates with Falk realizing the paint from the crime scene is house paint rather than car paint. Dwyer covers the paint from his daughter’s car with paint from the police station and capitalizes on the expectation that people’s perceptions will not match reality. He succeeds until Falk sees through the deception.
Kim’s perspective answers questions about the theme of Home and Exile related to her disappearance. Kim didn’t feel at home in Adelaide. She struggled at work and began to isolate herself from the Marralee community. This self-imposed exile was due in part to Rohan’s surveillance of her phone: “Rohan knew every time that someone from home called, and after a while tiring became tiresome. With everything going on at work, it was one more thing Kim could do without” (301). Not answering when someone from Marralee called or messaged became a pattern for Kim.
Kim’s longing to return home can be compared to Falk’s longing to return to Marralee after Kim’s mystery is solved. Once back at his job in Melbourne, the “urge to be in Marralee instead was like a steady, dull ache” (336). Falk wants to dedicate more time to being a godfather and being with Gemma. He chooses to make Marralee his home. Marralee is similar to Falk’s hometown of Kiewarra. He is reminded of “painting fences around the farm in Kiewarra with his dad as a kid. Whatever bad times there had been over the years, he found he was remembering the good times a lot more lately” (331). Being in Marralee resonates with Falk’s concept of home.
The theme of Memory’s Impact on the Present also culminates in the final section. Kim’s lack of memories of when she was assaulted as a teen haunts her. She is only able to remember a voice saying, “Relax.” While she lives in Marralee, Kim avoids the reservoir where the assault took place. Charlie, without asking why, “quietly made it easy for her” (298). He took alternate, longer routes to avoid going near the reservoir. Her repression of the assault leads to mental health conditions that manifest as forgetting important projects at work and other issues. Kim visits a “to see if her memory was okay” (303). This results in prescriptions, which Rohan uses to support his claim that she died by suicide.
Memory also shapes the crime at the heart of the investigation and its solution. After marrying Rohan and having a baby with him, Kim learns that he assaulted her at the party. Arguing that Zoe is Charlie’s baby, Rohan says, “It’s not like you’re the type to get blackout drunk and go off with some bloke you can’t remember” (306).. Enraged, he kills her at the lookout. Falk’s biggest clue to the mystery is his memory of seeing Rohan at the lookout a year after Kim’s murder. This sighting and the revelation that Kim was not at the festival help Falk solve the mystery. Memory, both false and true, instigates Kim’s murder and helps solve the case. Many of the obstacles in solving the case arise from the faulty nature of memory, easily manipulated by Rohan.
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