![Taboo by [Scott, Kim]](https://images-fe.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41HH2VIwhOL._SY346_.jpg)
I was disappointed with this novel. The two (2) things I was expecting did not happen, nor was the expectation subverted by the author:
(1) Beryl and her baseball bat. I was expecting her to mete out rough justice to the villain. This is where the author broke Chekov's Rule -- nothing eventuated from either Beryl or her bat;
(2) Tilly as the token Aborigine. She was treated as such by both blacks and whites. I was expecting her to rebel against this tokenism.
This novel has potential. It has the right central characters, Tilly and Gerald. Both of their character arcs fizzle out towards the end. They did have engaging stories and their characters developed realistically as they each met challenges.
An improvement would be to see how Tilly's and Gerald's stories are integrated in the ongoing Aboriginal narrative. This would be challenging as Aboriginal stories are told in situ. As the author explains in the afterword, stories are part of the landscape -- they lose meaning when told elsewhere.
This novel is difficult to read as a white Australian. One can recognise some very painful truths in the way whites treat blacks -- today and in the past. There is the embarrassing character of the white Aboriginal Support Officer, Maureen, who tells Aborigines what their culture is. Unfortunately, such characters do exist outside of fiction.
Review
'This is a complex, thoughtful, and exceptionally generous offering by a master storyteller at the top of his game.' Author: The Guardian
"Ambitious, unsentimental [and] morally challenging.' Author: Sydney Morning Herald
'Scott is one of the most thoughtful, exciting and powerful storytellers of this continent today, with great courage and formidable narrative prowess – and Taboo is his most daring novel yet.' Author: Sydney Review of Books
"Ambitious, unsentimental [and] morally challenging.' Author: Sydney Morning Herald
'Scott is one of the most thoughtful, exciting and powerful storytellers of this continent today, with great courage and formidable narrative prowess – and Taboo is his most daring novel yet.' Author: Sydney Review of Books
Book Description
From the two-times winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, comes a work charged with ambition and poetry, brutality and mystery about a young woman cast into a drama that has been playing for over two hundred years ...
