TOO MUCH LIP

When Kerry Salter returns to her hometown in New South Wales, the first conversation she has is with a trio of crows. The fact that they critique her command of the Bundjalung language is exasperating. The fact that, in Durrongo, even the birds are up in her business is a grating reminder of why she left in the first place. But her ex-girlfriend is in prison for robbery, and Kerry is hoping to avoid the same fate. Also, her grandfather is dying, so…home it is—at least for a bit. Lucashenko is an Indigenous Australian author, and her writing is suffused with language that will be unfamiliar to most American readers, which makes settling into the narrative a bit of a challenge. This is not a criticism. Indeed, while Lucashenko was almost certainly not writing with the aim of alienating an audience half a world away, there’s something fitting in making interlopers feel a bit disoriented as they enter a world of generational trauma that is largely the result of colonialism. Readers willing to accept that they are outsiders in Durrongo will have the chance to explore a world that few of us know—and a landscape that is sacred to the people who live within it. Kerry left home to escape a family plagued by addiction and violence, but the place itself will always be her spiritual home. A developer’s plan to transform the resting place of her ancestors recapitulates the long history of settler-colonials taking and transforming the land on which Indigenous people live. It also gives shape to this novel’s plot as it gives Kerry a mission and her whole family a chance at a future that contains the best parts of the past.

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