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The Natural Way of Things

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The Natural Way of Things

By: Charlotte Wood
Narrated by: Ailsa Piper
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About this listen

Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in an abandoned property in the middle of a desert. The Natural Way of Things is a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, and of what it means to hunt and be hunted. But most of all, it is the story of two friends, their sisterly love and courage.

©2015 Charlotte Wood (P)2016 W.F. Howes Ltd Dystopian Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Science Fiction Women's Fiction

Critic Reviews

"One hell of a novel by one of our most original and provocative writers." ( The Weekend Australian)
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makes you question your morals, your survival techniques, would people miss you and really is this possible. whole way through I was rechallenged with thoughts every chapter.

not what you expect

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struggled to start. took a number of attempts. i felt frustrated not to find out why they were taken and treated so badly??? i don't get it???

why

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What have you done Charlotte Wood? You have made Golding’s Lord of the Flies for this century and you have made it so very thrilling and real.

Verla wakes from a drugged sleep. She doesn’t know where she is, nor why she’s there. Another woman is thrust into the room - Yolanda. Verla and Yolanda are two of ten women who find themselves in the middle of the desert. Their heads are soon shaved and they are clothed in coarse, modest but completely impractical skirts, shirts and bonnets that act as blinders.

The dread begins from the first scenes and Wood never lets up. The girls are always on guard, and so are we.

The women are jailed in a compound in outback Australia, surrounded by an electric fence powerful enough to kill. Their jailers are a brutal, coarse idiot, and a stoner hippie. They are joined by Nancy the “nurse” who has no medical qualifications nor even a basic knowledge of first aid.

One evening the electricity at the compound goes off. The food begins to run out. Things were already bad and they are about to get worse.

There is nothing about this book that is predictable. Wood keeps us guessing and second guessing at every turn. It is exquisite, the sort of book where you need to remind yourself to breathe. Do not be fooled by the beautiful cover of the book. Wood’s story is ugly, ugly, ugly. It is the very worst of ourselves.

The book won the 2016 Stella Award (Australia’s top award for Women’s Literature) and is shortlisted for Australia’s most prestigious award, the Miles Franklin Award.

Alisa Piper gives the characters a powerful Aussie twang, perfectly suited to the women (and men) Wood has written. Piper draws you in quickly and performs the voices of each character superbly.

Remember to breathe - this book is exquisite!

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I find it very difficult to finish any books at all, thus must congratulate this audio book for getting me through. The narration was done excellently and the story was captivating.

I actually finished it!

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This will go down in history as one of Australia's greatest literary pieces.

very moving and provocative

Supreme piece of storytelling! Powerful!

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Charlotte Woods dystopian story set in the unforgiving Australian outback is not a stretch. The Australian governments cruelty to refugees on Manus and Naru clearly illustrating just how easy and convenient it would be to remove and quarantine women with stories of sexual assault - to allow the perpetrators of these crimes against women to thrive and to punish their victims afresh. The story is deeply disturbing but Woods writing is irresistible. Her teasing reveal of the women’s experiences and the building of their survivors skills is cloaked in exquisite tenderness and black humour, blood and compassion. What an absolute gem of a book. And narrated to perfection by Ailisa Piper. I can’t want in sink into more books by this author and read by Piper.

An unforgettable brilliant work

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I found this abit hard to follow and some of the scenes were very gruesome.

A bit hard to follow

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I'm not sure if I hated this or loved it. The concept behind the story is interesting, but I think it should have been further refined. In my opinion there should have been more of a focus on character development. But perhaps that would of taken away from the general mystique of the book. Parts of this book were pure genius, but the rest left me scratching my head. Really undecided.

I really can't decide...

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I loved the premise... Women wake up from a drugged sleep in the middle of the Australian outback, and soon realise they have been abducted and kept captive because they each publicly opened up about their intimate relationships with various public figures. On the property are two guards and one nurse who really isn't a nurse. The women are shaved bold, shown around the property (which is surrounded by live electric wire fences), insulted, humiliated, threatened, beaten, fed inedible foods and locked in dog kennels at night.
From now on, I will be spoiling the plot!!!
Then one day (I guess the day that was supposed to be change-over day for the crew or food stock filling, or whatever...) That day, nobody comes. So both the crew and the imprisoned women start to realise that they have been brought here to die and to die with their secrets.
Luckily, the women are resourceful, especially two of them who the plot is following, and they manage to hunt rabbits, etc.
The book wasn't bad. It was actually pretty good, until the end.
The end of the book is where I felt let down. There was no sense of conclusion. I felt like Charlotte Wood started to be tired of writing it and decided she would just give it an open-ending.
I imagine it was a calculation on her part to let things in suspend, but for me, it left me with a taste of unfinished business.
The book is coined a "contemporary feminist masterpiece" by The Guardian... While I agree that Charlotte Wood's prose and lyricism deserve praise, and that the themes explored and hinted at throughout the novel are indeed thought-provoking and an advocation for feminism, I cannot call it a masterpiece...

Haunting and a bit confusing

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I loved how the characters have been created, and overall is such a amazing book with great character development

How different it was to other books.

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