Taboo Kindle Edition

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.

I found it hard going at first, Scott moves between metaphors, fantasy and reality in a story told like no other. The result is that his words and sentences linger well beyond the page, the story starts with a bang, but then it changes pace and builds characters and plot with brutal tenderness. Events are in your face, others are hinted at, but the bravery is in putting it all in the perspective of both history and humanity, yet gently promoting the idea that maybe, just maybe, reconciliation is possible. Kim Scott should be front and centre of that debate!

Moving, terrible, honest - visionary and redemptive. I have read earlier writing from Kim Scott and this adds further lustre to a national literature which offers the chance for true reconciliation!

Great story

January 3, 2018
Martin Kerr
Language of hate, oppression, hope and humanity

Taboo
By Kim Scott
Picador Pan Macmillan, 2017, Sydney NSW, 287pp

When academics write novels they have to explain themselves in terms of what their aims and cultural objectives are. This is so in Drusilla Modjeska’s novel The Mountain (2012) and likewise with Kim Scott in his informative Afterword to Taboo. They are paid by the taxpayer and have to meet research criteria. In the case of Modjeska she compromises her novel with ‘politics’ and attitude to the point she avoids using words common with Papua New Guinea’s colonial past.
Scott is different. He could be any author with Noongar heritage, writing as he sees it, from prison, in the country, a town or city. There is a natural shambolic run in the story and in the language. He doesn’t need to explain himself. But an Afterword Kim Scott wrote, helpful to academics but not necessarily to the general reader. To continue in this mode, the novel could be re-caste as a text book for Noongar learners, introducing by way of end notes the words and language of the Noongar “‘The right words.’” (p112).
It took me a while to read this book; enjoy it small grabs. I was fortunate to have travelled through Western Australia’s Noongar country, Hopetown, and I walked and drove the steep hill through Ravensthorpe (Kepalup) in 2016.
The novel is about country and the people with a long connection to it, though they look white, almost, in many cases. The crossing points come from language, topography, massacres, rapes, relationships, marriages, land clearing, farming, harvesting and transport through the generations since the beginning of colonisation in the 1830s.
The story begins with the ending, though readers are not to know. Tilly was fostered by wheat farmers Dan and Janet Horton. Tilly, a school girl returns for the preparations for the opening of the Peace Park. Despite a Horton murdered by Noongar in 1881 resulting in a massacre on the Hortons’ properties Kokanarup, the Hortons (including Dan’s brother Malcolm) have much to offer Noongar descendants by way of knowledge of the landscape and artefacts found, many in the river beds.
Among the Noongar is a twin Gerald Coolman, in an out of prison but captivated by Uncle Jim (Tilly’s father) who taught him words of the ancient culture in prison. Gerry introduces Tilly to her relatives including Aunty Cheryl who with her mother Matilda have a relationship who the shadowy drug supplier and sometime parole officer Doug who happens to be the Dan Horton’s estranged son. Quietly and subtly Tilly is groomed and falls into drugs and depravity with Doug.
When Gerry Coolman is on a parole ordered bridging course at university, Tilly is at another school and visits an Aboriginal Support Officer who is knowledgeable but not really a Noongar. Aboriginal private school girls are supposed to learn how to dance Aboriginal style for a presentation at the college ball. Tilly is saved by this embarrassment in a message from Gerry to get down to Lake Grace.
In the lead up to the opening of the Peace Park Tilly becomes part of the cultural group rehabilitating from drugs and alcohol and preparing for a cultural response to the opening. They learn language and painting and visit historical sites in and around Hopetown and go fishing in a lake. They camp at a caravan park in the town, but Tilly is wary of Doug and also Gerry’s twin brother Gerrard.
Where is this revival of Noongar ways going? Nothing is straight forward. The bush changes with the wind, rain and seasons. Ghosts and artefacts are revealed in the waters and dried up creek beds (‘Dead white, their scarred bare arms silently beseeched the heavens,’ p231). Uncle Wilfred and others introduce words and language of the old times.
Dan Horton is set to pass his land over to Doug and Tilly, knowing little of his son’s nefarious activities. There’s a booze-up with locals at the local hotel; a fight, a car is stolen, local residents and artists team up with the Noongar. Doug dishes out drugs to the locals. Rehabilitation will have to start over again. It’s too late now that the Peace Park Opening is upon them.
An incident involving Tilly is uncovered. This Wirlomin mob knows what’s right and wrong. Humanity shifts and stirs in the atmosphere of bush, sea, granite rock sheets and crying birds. Will Tilly and others live to experience and enhance an ever expanding culture?
This is an excellent account of contemporary Aboriginal life.

Martin Kerr’s New Guinea Patrol was first published in 1973. His cult memoir, short stories and seven novels are available on Kindle.

Kim Scott's latest novel is about his own people and the country of his Noongar ancestors. Gerald Coolman is released from jail, intent on preserving the language and culture that he learned about from elders inside. He returns home to find moves afoot among the local community to return to Kepalup, a taboo place due to the massacre that occurred there.

Gerald's niece Tilly was raised white and only learned of her indigenous background when she heard from her dying father Jim, the elder who taught Gerald inside. She decides to go and seek out her long-lost family.

This is a story about a return to country under the most trying of circumstances. Not only are the Noongar haunted by the ghosts of their past, but the main characters have their own demons to deal with. For Gerald, it is the drug addiction that he is trying to shake by immersing himself in culture. Tilly has her own traumatic past to deal with, which follows her as she returns to Kepalup and encounters the white family that she was raised by.

Scott writes beautifully about the country that he grew up in and the casual racism that the Noongar encounter. The story is brutal in parts but is also amusing and hopeful.

Got to 25per cent, and very boring, had to give it away. The narrative & the content would be better expressed by a group of juveniles discussing their first footsteps in life.