With Heart of the Grass Tree, Molly Murn cements herself as not only one of Australia’s most exciting up-and-coming novelists, but a brilliant novelist of Australia.
In the South Australian author’s debut, multiple generations of a family ensconced in secrets and embroiled in personal turmoil converge on Kangaroo Island to farewell Nell, an Indigenous elder, mother and grandmother. The narrative flits between their stories, which occur in distinct time periods — the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries — and their unifying factor is Kangaroo Island, which makes the island, and its distinct landscape and indigenous population, the Ngarrindjeri people, the true protagonist of this extraordinary novel.
Lyricism empowers this tale of settlement on Kangaroo Island. Its prose is gorgeous, every page jewelled by Murn’s lyrical parlance, antithetical to the brutality of its conquest by the first settlers. Her rendering of the island’s natural beauty and it’s violent, oppressive history is truly exquisite and piercingly acute. A true gift of a novel from a truly impressive storyteller.
ISBN: 9780143792499
Format: Paperback / softback
Pages: 304
Imprint: Vintage (Australia)
Publisher: Random House Australia
Publish Date: 5-Feb-2019
Country of Publication: Australia
Reblogged this on Thoughts Become Words and commented:
Simon McDonald is a Sydney-based reader, writer and senior bookseller at Potts Point Bookshop. I always enjoy his book reviews. Simon writes perceptive, eloquent and up-to-the-minute appraisals which have helps me discover some great reads and I look forward to this one. GBW.
Hi Simon. I have reblogged and hope this is okay with you. It sounds like a great read! Gretchen.
I am so very grateful that I found your blog, and maybe I can find something you write in Norway or on the net. I got this feeling that this was interesting.
(I am sorry my English is not good)
Love from Norway🦋