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indoorg1rl's review against another edition
4.0
I discovered this book because of a booksta buddy read, and I’m glad to be exposed to unique readings I wouldn’t have come across otherwise!
Darnmoor, The Gateway to Happiness, was the home of the Billymil family, three generations who had lived in this 'gateway town'. Race relations between Indigenous and settler families were fraught. When the town's secrets started to be uncovered, the town was rocked by a violent act that forever shattered a century of silence.
This book took a while for me to get into initially, because I wasn’t sure if it was plot-driven or character-driven. After restarting the first 10% a few times, I got it. This story was character-driven, where the ‘characters’ were Dartmoor and the spirits. The humans were passing through, with their nastiness and cruelty towards each other, and with their fleeting lives.
Not gonna lie, I found it difficult to get attached to any character, except for Wil. His character stood out for me because he was the only one who came to live at Dartmoor by choice. Jakybird was another prominent character that got me super intrigued.
I ended up really enjoying the book. It was one that’d require multiple reads to fully absorb. I loved the lyrical writing and the symbolisms which taught me new things!
hanbanshee's review
5.0
Stunningly moving, a deep and enduring lament for and with the huge sacrifices and hardships Aboriginal peoples endure in order to bring healing to Country, multiply stolen from them, disrespected and deeply wounded. Darnmore resonated uncomfortably with the small settler country town in which I grew up—although somewhat less inflated with pride and grandiosity, Cambooya, Qld (Giabal & Jarrowair Country) nonetheless also insisted upon projecting a façade that attempts to erase and obscure the dark reality of its brutal past and ongoing wrongs. Song of the Crocodile beautifully and heart-wrenchingly weaves our history into the present in this era of reckoning, vulnerability, climate-change driven disasters, and the pain of First Nations Peoples and Country rising up and revealing the shallow and violent foundations on which the settler colonial nation state “australia” was built.
beclupton's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
aussiebookwitch's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
5.0
caitlinmhp's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
emilyfrizz's review
3.0
3.5 This book was written in a unique voice, bringing the landscape and connection to culture to the forefront. It has a melodic and drifting quality to the language and blends indigenous terms within the english prose. It was confronting in parts, with characters that you just wanted the best for. Definitely a reading experience unlike any other.
henrymarlene's review
4.0
The banks of the Mangamanga River and its Campgrounds are the scene for this ancestral story. The story spills into a dark, hatred filled town called Darnmoor where local Aboriginal communities are resented and treated with so much disrespect, abuse and racism. The Billymil family are treated as if they do not exist.
The Aboriginal culture that inhabits this story is rich and cries out through three generations of women - Margaret, Celie and Mili. It is through their culture and spirituality where they find and maintain their strength and determination to live their lives as proud Aboriginal people. This book gives a truly humbling experience in observing the process of grief and the connections between the living and the dead. The dead have such a profound impact on those that carry on, and they are never far from the living. The spirit world is strong and watches over everyone, and it also creates danger in the Crocodile spirit that stirs below everything.
The writing is poetic and magical. The Yuwaalaraay language is pure and beautiful and highlights the bonds of community at the Campgrounds. It brings to life a story, and equally pays homage to a living breathing culture that must be recognised for its longevity, its beauty and its continuation through the ages, as it has for thousands of years before us.
The Aboriginal culture that inhabits this story is rich and cries out through three generations of women - Margaret, Celie and Mili. It is through their culture and spirituality where they find and maintain their strength and determination to live their lives as proud Aboriginal people. This book gives a truly humbling experience in observing the process of grief and the connections between the living and the dead. The dead have such a profound impact on those that carry on, and they are never far from the living. The spirit world is strong and watches over everyone, and it also creates danger in the Crocodile spirit that stirs below everything.
The writing is poetic and magical. The Yuwaalaraay language is pure and beautiful and highlights the bonds of community at the Campgrounds. It brings to life a story, and equally pays homage to a living breathing culture that must be recognised for its longevity, its beauty and its continuation through the ages, as it has for thousands of years before us.
nina_reads_books's review
4.0
Song of the Crocodile by Nardi Simpson is an incredible debut novel. I love a good multigenerational saga and this delivered in spades.
The book is set in fictional Darnmoor, a small country town in Australia. When you arrive the sign proclaims “Darnmoor, The Gateway to Happiness” but the local Indigenous residents don’t get to live in Darnmoor proper, their homes are located out the back of the rubbish tip and are known as the Campgrounds.
The story centres around four generations of the Billymil family. We initially meet Margaret, then her daughter Celie, her granddaughter Milli and then finally the last generation Patrick and Yarrie. Just as you become invested in one character, time moves on and it’s time for the next generation’s turn in the spotlight. This was jarring but I think an effective storytelling tool.
There are layers of racial tension throughout the book between the white people of Darnmoor and the Indigenous people. The divide runs deep. Though there are moments of happiness and joy ultimately it is a tragedy that highlights the mpact of intergenerational trauma. It is a story of an Indigenous family over several generations but also a story of the effect of colonisation on Indigenous people and their land in Australia and the violence and injustices that they have experienced.
The truly clever and fascinating part of Song of The Crocodile was that interspersed between the stories of the Billymil family were chapters dedicated to the ancient spirits that spoke to the Indigenous people throughout history. These chapters were imaginative and exquisitely written. The use of animal totems, spiritual ancestors and an almost dream like alternate storyline was so different and really worked. I won’t pretend that I understood all of the imagery but it was wonderful to read!
The book is set in fictional Darnmoor, a small country town in Australia. When you arrive the sign proclaims “Darnmoor, The Gateway to Happiness” but the local Indigenous residents don’t get to live in Darnmoor proper, their homes are located out the back of the rubbish tip and are known as the Campgrounds.
The story centres around four generations of the Billymil family. We initially meet Margaret, then her daughter Celie, her granddaughter Milli and then finally the last generation Patrick and Yarrie. Just as you become invested in one character, time moves on and it’s time for the next generation’s turn in the spotlight. This was jarring but I think an effective storytelling tool.
There are layers of racial tension throughout the book between the white people of Darnmoor and the Indigenous people. The divide runs deep. Though there are moments of happiness and joy ultimately it is a tragedy that highlights the mpact of intergenerational trauma. It is a story of an Indigenous family over several generations but also a story of the effect of colonisation on Indigenous people and their land in Australia and the violence and injustices that they have experienced.
The truly clever and fascinating part of Song of The Crocodile was that interspersed between the stories of the Billymil family were chapters dedicated to the ancient spirits that spoke to the Indigenous people throughout history. These chapters were imaginative and exquisitely written. The use of animal totems, spiritual ancestors and an almost dream like alternate storyline was so different and really worked. I won’t pretend that I understood all of the imagery but it was wonderful to read!
pilebythebed's review
4.0
Nardi Simpson’s scorching novel Song of the Crocodile opens with the irony of a sign on the way into the small Australian country town of Darnmoor, the Gateway to Happiness. The fly-through that follows will be familiar to anyone who has driven around regional Australia. Two main streets with a war memorial at its crossroads, a bunch of shops and pub, the court and police station. And then out of town, past the rubbish tip and on the banks of the river is the “Campgrounds” – the Aboriginal community, the first people, exiled to the fringes of the town. Song of the Crocodile starts somewhere in the 1960s and charts four generations of the Billymil family and their struggle against the monolithic culture that is trying to crush them.
When the book opens, matriarch Margaret has been fired from her sheet washing job at the local hospital, accused of a crime that she did not commit. Not long after that her pregnant daughter Celie gives birth on the night her son-in-law is killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The bulk of the story then focusses on Celie who has to make a life for herself and her daughter Mili who finds herself not only the subject of long held prejudices that hold her back but of casual sexual violence and later Patrick, her son from that encounter. But Simpson also runs a parallel narrative which takes readers to the world of the spirits, the place that the dead go to watch over those left behind. But there is danger here to, and it comes in the form of the rapacious Crocodile spirit that is stirring under the river bed.
Simpson’s sweeping novel captures the trials and struggle of Aboriginal communities in Australia in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Marginalised and discriminated against, then used as a workforce to destroy their own heritage and relocated when the town seeks to build its levee. The characters each represent a different relationship with the town community and with the authorities. And while they are to some degree emblematic, Simpson infuses them with complex and individual personalities so that they never come across as archetypes or stereotypes. That said, the scope of this novel means that Simpson often skips quickly across the years at a fairly dizzying pace, leaving much of the detail behind to move to events that move the plot forward.
Song of the Crocodile is itself full of song and the evocative Yuwaalaraay language of North West New South Wales. It presents a unsentimental but evocative view of the experience of Aboriginal communities and Aboriginal people, of the ongoing prejudice and the impacts of abuse and inter-generational trauma. But rooted in the experiences of its protagonists, it also highlights the joy, the support and sense of community. Simpson grabs the reader’s attention from the her poetic but disturbing opening and delivers a narrative that rewards that attention.
When the book opens, matriarch Margaret has been fired from her sheet washing job at the local hospital, accused of a crime that she did not commit. Not long after that her pregnant daughter Celie gives birth on the night her son-in-law is killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The bulk of the story then focusses on Celie who has to make a life for herself and her daughter Mili who finds herself not only the subject of long held prejudices that hold her back but of casual sexual violence and later Patrick, her son from that encounter. But Simpson also runs a parallel narrative which takes readers to the world of the spirits, the place that the dead go to watch over those left behind. But there is danger here to, and it comes in the form of the rapacious Crocodile spirit that is stirring under the river bed.
Simpson’s sweeping novel captures the trials and struggle of Aboriginal communities in Australia in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Marginalised and discriminated against, then used as a workforce to destroy their own heritage and relocated when the town seeks to build its levee. The characters each represent a different relationship with the town community and with the authorities. And while they are to some degree emblematic, Simpson infuses them with complex and individual personalities so that they never come across as archetypes or stereotypes. That said, the scope of this novel means that Simpson often skips quickly across the years at a fairly dizzying pace, leaving much of the detail behind to move to events that move the plot forward.
Song of the Crocodile is itself full of song and the evocative Yuwaalaraay language of North West New South Wales. It presents a unsentimental but evocative view of the experience of Aboriginal communities and Aboriginal people, of the ongoing prejudice and the impacts of abuse and inter-generational trauma. But rooted in the experiences of its protagonists, it also highlights the joy, the support and sense of community. Simpson grabs the reader’s attention from the her poetic but disturbing opening and delivers a narrative that rewards that attention.