“Only now did the two girls look at each other’s faces in wonder at what they had made. A totem, it could be a ghost. It could be a warrior, voodoo doll, goddess, corpse.”

Henry enjoying the great outdoors. Peron Dunes, St Helens Point, Tasmania. July 2021.

The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood

This is a rather odd little novel that I couldn't quite figure out. As an exercise in delivering a brutal reality check on the misogeny ingrained in Australian culture, the decidedly odd setting, bizarre ambience and hypnagogic pacing tended to confuse things.

I felt that while the brusque and violent opening was very effective, the drift into a dreamlike meandering through the final two-thirds of the book diluted the initial intensity. The exploration of the shifting loyalties and relations of the imprisoned women seemed plausible, but there's no depth to any of the characters bar two, and even then I was never wholly convinced.

I can understand from an intellectual level the messages around institutional abuse, gendered violence, weakness versus power and the tenuous threads of 'civilisation' and I can see what Wood is trying to do. Unfortunately, as a novel I found it a little too obtuse and hallucinatory to really nail these important themes.

Unlike many (it seems), I will say that I did not mind the ending. Any other conclusion would have further weaken what she is trying to say.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Comments

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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