A dreamlike novel from Australian aboriginal author Wright of a
dreamtime interrupted as Australian native peoples meet industrial
civilization.If you can call it civilization, that is. Perched on
the infernally hot salt flats of northern Queensland, at some
distance from a sluggish river full of mud and "serpents and fish
in the monsoon season," is a waterless port town named Desperance,
the center of Wright's stately epic. Around Desperance - waterless
so long that no one can remember when it stood near water - snakes
a ring of aboriginal encampments, each a little more desperate than
the next. In one lives a suggestively named old man, Normal
Phantom, wise but somewhat feckless, given to making pronouncements
in the voice of "a presidential Captain Hook." Inside another camp
are the Eastend boys, ne'er-do-wells deluxe, who have their
difficulties with the neighbors. After all, as the narrator quietly
observes, this idea that people should live in harmony "was a
policy designed by the invader's governments," and not really
anything inherent in human nature. Among these " 'edge' people, all
of the blackfella mob living with quiet breathing in
higgily-piggerly, rubbish-dump trash shacks," rivalries unfold,
difficulties ensue and untoward events multiply. Imagine Gabriel
Garc'a Marquez's fictional town Macondo set on dustier ground and
with considerably more magic - and aboriginal mythology - worked
into the magical realism, and you have some approximation of
Wright's fluent tale, in which not much happens but a large cast of
memorable characters are allowed to show themselves: a
Bible-thumper, a psychopath whose motto is "Hit first, talk later,"
some quirky types and some just plain normal folk. Wright, a member
of the Waanyi people, turns in stretches of mixed-language patois
that is a pleasure but sometimes a challenge to follow ("Big
cyclone coming, boy, everybody barrba, jayi, yurrngi-jbangka - you
better come with us") as the tale winds its way to the end.A
latter-day epic that speaks, lyrically, to the realities and
aspirations of aboriginal life. (Kirkus Reviews)
Set in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance,
Carpentaria is the unforgettable portrait of the powerful Phantom
family, leader of the Westend Pricklebush people, and its battles
with old Joseph Midnight's renegade Eastend mob on the one hand,
and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit
mine on the other. By turns operatic and surreal, Wright's stunning
and richly imagined storytelling is a blend of myth and scripture,
farce and politics. Her extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the
outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, the murderous
mayor Stan Bruiser, the moth-ridden Captain Nicoli Finn, the
activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, the rulers
of the family, the queen of the rubbish-dump and the fish-embalming
king of time, Angel Day and Normal Phantom - stride like giants in
this storm-swept world.
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