wow.To start with, this book took me nearly two weeks to read, which is about four times longer than I expect to spend on a book. So the thing is not a page turner. In many places it has almost dream like, hypnotic flavour. So many times I found myself paging back to try and work out if what I was reading was straightforward narrative, someone's imaginings, a dream perhaps? In as far as this is indicative of a problem, I think the problem was largely with me, habituated as I am to significantly less demanding reading. But at least part of this was intentional, I'm sure, or at least a natural result of some particular choices by the author about how she has told her story. As Ashley from ClimbtheStacks said in her review of the Color Purple recently, to tell a new type of story you need a new way of telling that story. One of the structural particularities in the telling of this work is the way the passage of time is dealt with. The events of some chapters follow directly on from the events of the chapter before, but in other cases months, years (or even decades?) have passed, with no mention of this fact. Another, connected peculiarity is that many of the most significant events in the lives of the central characters happen 'off stage', often between chapters. This is one of the choices by the author which give the work it's dreamlike nature. These events, when they are eventually retold, are presented in an off hand manner, and with the inevitability of hindsight. The story is told from the point of view of a presumably omniscient observer who looks down, sometimes from afar, other times from close up, on the doings of the small (fictional) town of Desperance, in Far North West Queensland, on the Gulf of Carpentaria. The people of the town consist of the white folk of Uptown, and the fringe-dwelling Pricklebush mob. The Pricklebush mob are further divided sharply into Westside and Eastside, and there is bad blood between the two groups. The Eastside mob are headed up by Joseph Midnight, who broke away from the Westside people, reluctantly led by the quasi-hero of the book, Norm Phantom. At different times in the story it seems the break was caused by the Eastsiders wanting to distance themselves from Norm's wife Angel Day (who, to be fair, is pretty much trouble on two legs), or possibly because Old Man Midnight was looking to (illegitimately ?) claim traditional owner status and the mining money which went along with this, or possibly the break is really a simple acknowledgement that the groups were historically distinct; Westside are sea-people who have always lived on the coast where Desperance has appeared, Eastside are largely people from further inland who had been displaced by various events, and had come to live around Desperance in more recent times. A third group of aboriginal actors in the story is the pilgrim band led by Mozzie Fishman, who in a convoy of beaten up cars travel in a never ending sacred journey along certain song lines of the country, returning to Desperance every two years or so.The first half of the book chops and changes in its focus, as the players and setting of the story are introduced. We even get chapters examining the doings of Uptown, which largely disappears from view as the story progresses. The second half of the book is mainly taken up in the story of Norm Phantom and his now estranged son Will, and the fallout of Will's struggle against the Gurffurit mine. The Phantom family are one of the most compelling and authentically described fictional families I have ever met. Norm, the down to earth, and yet somewhat magical patriarch; Angel (who, seriously, what a piece of work is that woman!) the Queen of all she surveys; the two oldest boys, boofheads, brawlers, working down the mine; Kevin, at one time the bright hope of Desperance, an intellectual child prodigy who on his first day of work down the mine (the only significant employer in the region) is nearly killed, and left a damaged shell and an 'idiot'; Girlie, an angry young woman who is cursed by her beauty and the men she attracts; Girlie's two big sisters, with heads full of superstition, and a passel of kids each, running the Phantom household with hardly a kind word from anyone; and finally Will. Will, so present even in his absence, who has broken with Norm twice over, by getting involved in land rights politics and direct action against the mine, and by taking up with Hope, Joseph Midnight's daughter.There is much humour in this book, though the events of the story are largely bleak: casual violence, arson, murders, deaths in custody, a devastating storm. In the end there is hope for, though hardly a guarantee of, a brighter future. This is an amazing book. Hard work, but really worth it. I am absolutely looking forward to reading Alexis Wright's subsequent novel, The Swan Book, but I think I am going to give myself a little time to recover from the experience of reading this one first.
I didn't understand much of what I read in this book - so my 'two star' rating isn't really a judgment on the quality of the novel, but on how much I enjoyed it, and how much I, personally, could piece together. I imagine if you're a literary sort, you could mine this deliciously for all kinds of repeated metaphor and thematics and meaning. I mostly spent the read going, "what is going on?"In the largest terms, this is a book about the Aboriginal spirits of Australia being mightier than the workings of the interloper whites. All that the whites have created on the northern coast in a town called Desperance - segregation, poverty, racism, environmental damage - will be destroyed piece by piece, the spirits of land and sea ultimately taking back what's theirs by rights. Amid that are Aboriginal characters who act as witness, who sometimes have a hand in reading what the spirits are up to, and who occasionally act to help things along. Mostly, however, they're onlookers, aware of a world that the whites aren't, exactly, and both grateful and fearful of it in turn.This is overwhelmingly a book about men. It's white men who commit the worst crimes toward land and other people in the novel; it's Aboriginal men who protest, undermine, and survive what goes on. Women are always problems - they're unfaithful, a disappointment to their fathers, nags, and most of all, they're stupid, judged so by the central male protagonists, or by their rejection of Aboriginal wisdom, and truthfully, they're written so by the author too. There are moments where the author suggests yes, these women are trapped by bad choices and economics and culture and waste, but overall there's less pen-time spent even hinting at that than sketching the broad, obvious strokes of white men's fight against black. Women are secondary characters, at best, and their existence is always meant to demonstrate something about a man's trials, a man's development, a man's fortune. There are beautiful moments in the book, written with a clarity I didn't always find throughout - the death of Gordie and the ensuing ramifications for three Aboriginal boys, the police chief, and the mayor of the town was one of my favorite parts of the book. Still, my overall sense is that I just didn't get why some things were described at such length, or how and why things were included in the novel. Again, I think that probably says more about me than about Wright.
Do You like book Carpentaria (2015)?
IT took me a while to get into and understand Wright's style. She flicks from reality, to dreaming, to spirituality, and back again. At times I didnt know if I was in a reality bit or a dreaming bit. Once i got into the swing of it all I couldn't put the book down. 518 pages of mostly riveting reading. Set in the Gulf of Carpentaria the novel focuses on a small town and its characters along with the mining industry setting up a new mine in the region; those who want it and those who dont. Wright certainly takes you on a journey into the life and culture of Australia's indigenous community in that area of the country. A gifted writer who keeps the reader interest taut. Yes, I recommend the novel.
—Victoria
4 pages into this book, I'm hooked despite the fact that the print in small and the book large...Okay, a week in and I am still slowly reading this book and think I will probably have to give it back to the library before I have finsihed it.The problem with my disabilities is that sometimes, no matter how much I love a book, I just can't continue reading them. In some cases its because they are physically too heavy, in other cases its because the writing is too dense for me to concentrate. Unfortunately, this book, like Catch22 and Sophies world falls in to that category for me now. Oh, for the powers of concentration I used to have.
—Sally Koetsveld
William Cronon has described how the landscapes we start and end our stories with can often constitute the story itself. This novel works almost like a meditation on that idea. The land and sea are this story's most compelling characters. The others who people them often seem like they are just thickening the description of the country, when they are not busy trying to reshape it in even more literal ways. This storytelling approaches the style of aboriginal myth, as surely as the narrator's voice is aboriginal. This, then, is a distinctive and important book. That's not to say it is an easy one to read. There is satire throughout that made me want to weep more than laugh. The town of Desperance seems a good approximation of hell; how much worse that it sits in the wonderland country the narrator also draws out for us.
—Colin
