*SPOILERS*In Journey to the Stone Country, Annabelle Beck casts away her life as she knows it to follow Bo Rennie, an Aboriginal guy she knew of vaguely in her past, on a sort of journey of self discovery through land symbolic to his and her people in central and northern Queensland.
I’m disappointed in this book. When I initially read about it, I was excited to start it because it seemed to have many of the elements I like in a novel... I love stories about life and people and the internal and external struggles that colour all our lives... but this book left me baffled, annoyed and even a little embarrassed for the author at times!
First of all, the sentence structure! I know that there are times when an author
throws away the rule book when it comes to grammar in order to create certain
emotion or symbolism within the writing.
In fact, I love that some
authors do this meddling with the rules for sake of art and poetry. (A little
like an abstract painter meddles with reality to create a more
engaging/beautiful/meaningful piece of art). Some authors do it beautifully – Alex Miller does not. It just annoyed me that he kept leaving the
verb out! “The muted sound of teevees and radios from neighbouring houses.” That is not a sentence! Alex Miller just seems like a literary try
hard to me. Oh God! The bit where Annabelle was thinking about
the stone she found. She could think of the Italian, the French and even the
Latin word to describe its weight, but not the English? Lame!!! “The English word gravity, she decided, would not quite do. Perhaps the poets had been too free with it
in the past.” What the?! Oh Alex, you’re embarrassing yourself! And it’s so incongruous with the rest of the
writing of the book!
Next, the story line:
It seems completely unrealistic to me that a well educated woman with a
whole life in Melbourne would so quickly evacuate from her old life and allow
herself to be smothered by the life of a knock-about, rough and ready guy she’s
really only known for a few days. Okay so she knew of him from her past...but
seriously?!!! Maybe this sort of thing
does happen. But it annoys me. So your cheating, sleazy husband has an
affair? Leave him, sure! Go on a holiday, leave your troubles behind
for a while, have a fling if you really must!
But shack up with a guy you hardly know and start planning on changing
your career, uprooting your life, selling your house, selling your inherited
family home and cashing in your superannuation??!!! This is what Annabelle our main character does. What the hell? Oh and I hated how Bo suddenly started
calling Annabelle ‘my love’ after their great love scene. I actually laughed out loud when I read the
love scene – and then I had to read it out to Benji (my partner) and he laughed too!!!
...Which brings me to the next point: The alpha male! I was so annoyed all the way through the
novel that Bo was some sort of expert on everything! I mean Annabelle is a grown woman, an
educated woman who’s seen a bit of the world... and she suddenly just has no
opinion and no ideas and just looks with her big puppy dog eyes to Bo to see
what he thinks!?!?!!! (Okay, so I made up her eyes... but I can JUST
imagine!!!) And that poor Hearn
Family - a family whose farm the pair visit along their travels! Who the hell does Bo think he is
telling everyone the right way to do things?!
Speaking of the Hearns... another idiotic part of the
storyline: That they’re talking about
wedding bells and babies just because a couple of teenagers got a bit amorous
with each other? Matthew and Trace were
probably just lonely and charged up with teenage hormones... But there’s Bo and
Annabelle (and The Hearns too, actually) thinking that after a few hours
together they’ll be getting married next.
Stupid.
The description of
food throughout the novel was interesting.
It actually made me feel sick that there were no fresh fruit or
vegetables eaten throughout the whole book.
All those steaks and sausages!!
But at least this was a fairly realistic representation of the diet of your
average central Queensland working class male. (I grew up in a little mining town quite near
to where the first part of the book was set!)
So I admit it was clever and insightful to include culinary (too strong a word?) descriptions.
I think what could have been the main theme, the difficult relations between
Black and White Australia, was left under developed. The reality of much of Black Australia is
heartbreaking and gut-wrenching . If as
an author, you are going to explore this theme, then I think the reader should
feel torn and uncomfortable and sick and sad and ashamed ...because that is the
reality. Alex Miller didn’t bring enough
of that desperation to the table to make this the gutsy and emotionally
challenging novel I was expecting.
(Think of the film Sampson and Delilah - that's what I was expecting.)
Look, to be fair, I didn’t hate reading this book. Some of the scenery (probably because I grew
up in the area) was interesting to read about.
And the scene with old Panya was well done: pretty sobering and sad and unfortunately
probably quite realistic. This part was hard to read because it was so real
and it highlighted many of the irreconcilable problems between Black and White
Australia. But then there was not much
further discussion between Bo and Annabelle about it, which was disappointing
and frustrating! I can't believe this one a Miles Franklin Award.
P.s. I never really got the point of Arner’s character. What was the mystery he was hiding?
** Adapted from my own submision to a book club to which I once belonged.
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