I got this book because I wanted to understand why I couldn't talk to my Australian housemate. Probably Australians would never agree with me, but I think at this point the average Sydneysider is more like native Australians than she is like British or Americans, especially the younger ones of both. I think it's become a more deeply and durably exotic country than any of them know themselves. Wright might grudgingly agree with me a tiny little bit, I don't know. Look what she writes about the immigrant townspeople (paraphrased a bit):
You got to believe what was true in the homes of
Desperanians. A folk tale of ancient times elsewhere
was stored in treasure chests in the minds of these
people. A sea people such as themselves, come from
so far away to be lost, would forever have all seas
in their sights. That was their story.
The book didn't help the way I thought it might because there are almost no conversations with two people in them. There are people talking to themselves out loud, or wandering around thinking about things, and then there are massive theatrical mob scenes in towns and bars and camps with people throwing things or combing the area with torches or gawking at a disaster. There are also mob scenes where people are not in the same room but are sheltered inside their humpys or houses connected by their similar thoughts, so of course these people are not actually talking at all, since they are relatively far away from each other, though i mean...not that far, like, a few feet, not like between Australia and America far...but, although not a conversation it's written in the book as if it were one through being mediated by the cultural framework of the town's streets or the beach or the camp or the Amazon comments forum.
In spite of not helping it made me feel a lot better because her characters are oddly open and gracious toward past conversations in their memory: even though when they were actually talking it would seem to a third listener like they were getting nowhere, yelling past each other, or just, um...saying something like, trying to look for spots or flares on the sun which is impossible because it's too bright, well, it's not true. In the end everyone does speak and hear each other. And it does not matter if they repeat themselves during the conversations or not because everything echos, for years. In _Carpentaria_ no single substory, even in the sense that a conversation is a substory....it never happens in less than five years ever, and often takes much longer.
The story itself is beyond unbearable but the way it's told is brilliant enough to soothe some of the regret. definitely srsbzns.
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Abika
Thanks to the author, Wonderful piece of art
Reviewed in India on March 11, 2022L Marsh
The most interesting use of language I've encountered in a book for a long time.
Reviewed in Australia on August 17, 2020