Author: Sue Hall Pyke

Known facts hidden in full view, this deep research centres on a villain pathological enough to make a reader think not-me until the shock of his freedom sinks in. Historical records as curated fragments, an art as polished as a memorial statue.

Reading this book, vital in these times, the spin of its truths. Not a book to hurry and a book to return to, over and over. All those voices. ‘You just had to be able to hear them’ (126). And then listen.

Allowances for vulnerability, age, a virus, shared animality, all tender under the skin, all drawn large in the glory of a bird caged in a cage in a cage of a drawn jungle, stealing the show where veganism is normalcy not madness.

Inclining ‘to forget what we’ve said or done in the past’ to dodge ‘the obligation to remain faithful’ to such declarations (47). Or writing towards truths, including the difficulty in understanding ‘what is kindness and what is ruthlessness’ in our lives (131).

A barrage of story worlds crowned by King. A gnarl of a roo watching a rival ‘perfuming the whole paddock’ (235). Death ready, catching him, he will fall and fight to become more, together with kin. Politics of all that is animal.

How to write such a book and not dissolve? How to read such a book and be able to respond to what lies at its core, the beauty, the ravaging relations. I am prey, this work hunt me down, jags me raw.

Epiphanies, familiar and specific to each moment. Decades devoted to staying close, staying quiet, opening to the sweep-through of awe. The slip of black snakes, the sniff of a doe sensing the life of her fawn. A call to meditate, to drift.

A sisterly recommendation, this book that bursts with the colour of music. Thinking through notes and passing the harms white culture can do. Tensions between mother and daughter and masculinist pain and the liberation of women free to play their own tune.

Things chatter all the time, and this book that takes that  truth seriously, takes me where I want to go, takes as a fungi the vibrant DNA, of books, books that they join with readers, becoming part of a greater imaginative body.

This:

‘Gama yarga

why you keep me awake

is to teach me I am not alone

Guwany

why you keep me awake

is the night like day to you

Gibam garandalehn

why you keep me awake

what am I still to do’

(101)