A game changer for the Australian literary canon

This novel is a transformative piece of fiction, repositioning event after event of colonisation and failure after failure of the Australian government and non-Aboriginal people into a contemporary time-shifting narrative of the Anthropocene.

I read a physical copy of this book last year when it first came out (I went to the launch in Melbourne and listened to Alexis Wright talk about it) and have just finished listening to the audiobook.

It took me a long time to read the book, not only because it is long, but because there were so many beautifully crafted sentences, incredibly constructed ideas, and transformative uses of language, that I had to keep re-reading paragraph after paragraph and swoon with the pleasure of the beauty of the words. This language usage, sense of time and space and the way the text itself is construction in terms of the usage of time and space and repetition is why I wrote it was a game changer for the literary canon. I think this form is innovative and pushes the boundaries of the ways that literature represents time and space.

Beyond this though, was the time taken to listen deeply to the text and to think about the impacts of the ever-present failures of government and citizenry, the realities of how policy and legislation have played out on the ground in Aboriginal communities and the impacts of these on everyday lives and families. As I was listening to the book, every day on the news echoes of the events from the "intervention" were on the news.

I especially loved the ways that the Uluru Statement from the Heart was woven into the text, coming through as a love song of Truth, situating the text in a set of agreed statements from an intensive and collaborative process of many Aboriginal people.

I also loved the ending of the novel, the ways in which the loss of Aboriginal Sovereignty was mourned, reconfigured and reworked differently for everyone over time. I found the moments when the feral donkey business takes off and the churches all wanted to be moved around for special events to be hilariously funny...

I have to admit that I am a very big fan butterflies and moths, so particularly loved all the sections about them, of Dance's work in holding things together as she also let it go. I looked up the species.

The reading is terrific. I loved Jacquie Katana's voice, and felt her telling the story to me as the listener. I especially loved that all of the Aboriginal words and languages were correct, but every now and then she stumbled over a Latin butterfly name. I loved this because so often speakers stumble over Aboriginal place names.

I highly recommend this book and think it will win the Miles Franklin and at least be nominated for the Booker.

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