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nataliemeree's review
2.0
I get very defensive about the representation of Indigenous culture in writing. I am a white woman whose ancestors invaded this land. I take that knowledge of how I came to be here very seriously.
In Beneath the Mother Tree we are exploring the connectedness of an island off the coast of Australia. Not only the connectedness of the people but also of the spirits and the animals and the moon and the plants. Now this is where I believe we should have explored the stories and lore of the First Nations people of this island. Instead we were forced to focus on Irish folklore and the way a man of Irish inheritance used the island's connectedness to weave into his ancestors stories from another country.
Now this annoyed me. But what annoyed me even more was the throwing in of some Indigenous characters and some Indigenous history and some racism in the most offhanded manner. None of the 4 main characters were Indigenous but one had an Indigenous lover and one had an Indigenous friend. And our Aunty of the island got a couple of paragraphs about one of the most horrible massacre sights on the island where her family where forced to drown. And our Indigenous friend who lived in the city and experienced everyday racism got to share that through her white friend talking about her own outrage at the situation. I feel like they were thrown in as token characters to make sure the author ticked the Indigenous sensitivity box. And I didn't like that at all.
There are a number of other things that contributed to my 2 star rating.
Throughout the first 100 pages of the book we are introduced to so many major themes - grief, drug addiction, domestic abuse. And my hope was they were all introduced for a reason and that would contribute to the novel being tied up at the end. But no. The grief was never really explored. It was just used as a way to create a mood. The drug addiction was tragic but happened to a sideline character whose relationship with the other members of the island was so loving. But that dynamic was never fleshed out. The domestic abuse was just referred to when one of the main characters saw her neighbour with a black eye. Nope we got no more insight into that. I just think the author could have left out a few of these themes and just gave us more writing of characters rather than having to put labels on people so we could use our own world experience to imagine who they were.
What did I like? The writing wasn't bad. It was easy to read. I wouldn't call it wonderful nature writing. I used my knowledge of Australian islands to take me there. But at no point did I gasp at bad use of words.
But the things I didn't like are just too big for me to get past. So it's 2 star for me…
In Beneath the Mother Tree we are exploring the connectedness of an island off the coast of Australia. Not only the connectedness of the people but also of the spirits and the animals and the moon and the plants. Now this is where I believe we should have explored the stories and lore of the First Nations people of this island. Instead we were forced to focus on Irish folklore and the way a man of Irish inheritance used the island's connectedness to weave into his ancestors stories from another country.
Now this annoyed me. But what annoyed me even more was the throwing in of some Indigenous characters and some Indigenous history and some racism in the most offhanded manner. None of the 4 main characters were Indigenous but one had an Indigenous lover and one had an Indigenous friend. And our Aunty of the island got a couple of paragraphs about one of the most horrible massacre sights on the island where her family where forced to drown. And our Indigenous friend who lived in the city and experienced everyday racism got to share that through her white friend talking about her own outrage at the situation. I feel like they were thrown in as token characters to make sure the author ticked the Indigenous sensitivity box. And I didn't like that at all.
There are a number of other things that contributed to my 2 star rating.
Throughout the first 100 pages of the book we are introduced to so many major themes - grief, drug addiction, domestic abuse. And my hope was they were all introduced for a reason and that would contribute to the novel being tied up at the end. But no. The grief was never really explored. It was just used as a way to create a mood. The drug addiction was tragic but happened to a sideline character whose relationship with the other members of the island was so loving. But that dynamic was never fleshed out. The domestic abuse was just referred to when one of the main characters saw her neighbour with a black eye. Nope we got no more insight into that. I just think the author could have left out a few of these themes and just gave us more writing of characters rather than having to put labels on people so we could use our own world experience to imagine who they were.
What did I like? The writing wasn't bad. It was easy to read. I wouldn't call it wonderful nature writing. I used my knowledge of Australian islands to take me there. But at no point did I gasp at bad use of words.
But the things I didn't like are just too big for me to get past. So it's 2 star for me…
tasmanian_bibliophile's review
5.0
‘You see better with your eyes shut.’
On Moondarrawah, a small island off the coast of Queensland, lives a small tight-knit community. Everyone knows everyone else’s business but, mostly, people respect each other’s boundaries. For Ayla, the island has always been home. She left for a while to study but soon returned. Her grandfather, known as Grappa (a name the community finds fitting) is filled with the Irish mythology shared with him by his grandmother. Grappa hears a flute being played, he’s sure it’s the Far Dorocha, the dark servant of the faery queen returned to cause trouble. He hastens to the Nor Folk Tree to ask protection for Ayla.
Two strangers have moved to the island. Riley and his mother Marlise have moved there following the death of Riley’s stepfather. Marlise is an entomologist, while Riley is the mysterious flute player. A series of strange deaths have the locals wondering: are they connected to the strangers?
Part mystery and part love story, this novel also draws on Indigenous history and Irish mythology. Ms Cameron has written a novel in which these elements work together to demonstrate connections between people and place, between different perceptions of reality and ownership. Of the major characters, Marlise has secrets, Riley seeks answers, Ayla feels like she doesn’t belong.
The island has history, as do the people who live there. The past is never far from the surface and the present is complicated. The environment is also important, and Ms Cameron describes the setting beautifully. The Mother Tree is central to the novel: important to both the Indigenous people and those of Irish heritage. There’s magic here, both in the story and in the telling of it.
This is a novel to read and (in my case at least) to reread. This is Ms Cameron’s debut novel: I hope it is the first of many.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
On Moondarrawah, a small island off the coast of Queensland, lives a small tight-knit community. Everyone knows everyone else’s business but, mostly, people respect each other’s boundaries. For Ayla, the island has always been home. She left for a while to study but soon returned. Her grandfather, known as Grappa (a name the community finds fitting) is filled with the Irish mythology shared with him by his grandmother. Grappa hears a flute being played, he’s sure it’s the Far Dorocha, the dark servant of the faery queen returned to cause trouble. He hastens to the Nor Folk Tree to ask protection for Ayla.
Two strangers have moved to the island. Riley and his mother Marlise have moved there following the death of Riley’s stepfather. Marlise is an entomologist, while Riley is the mysterious flute player. A series of strange deaths have the locals wondering: are they connected to the strangers?
Part mystery and part love story, this novel also draws on Indigenous history and Irish mythology. Ms Cameron has written a novel in which these elements work together to demonstrate connections between people and place, between different perceptions of reality and ownership. Of the major characters, Marlise has secrets, Riley seeks answers, Ayla feels like she doesn’t belong.
The island has history, as do the people who live there. The past is never far from the surface and the present is complicated. The environment is also important, and Ms Cameron describes the setting beautifully. The Mother Tree is central to the novel: important to both the Indigenous people and those of Irish heritage. There’s magic here, both in the story and in the telling of it.
This is a novel to read and (in my case at least) to reread. This is Ms Cameron’s debut novel: I hope it is the first of many.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
sowkan91's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
karen_bayly's review
5.0
A well-written and engaging read which deftly uses Irish/Celtic mythology and its connection with nature as a counterpoint to traditional Indigenous connection with land. I loved the mystery aspect, the nagging sense of unease, of something or someone slowly unraveling and was pleased that the love story did not overwhelm this.
smashy's review
4.0
This was more than I was expecting, it was pretty great.
It had juicy drama, slight creepy-ness, lyrical writing, sweetness, engaging atmosphere, mythical magic, little bit of mystery. Nice mixed bag.
I will be looking out for the next from [a:D.M. Cameron|18056427|D.M. Cameron|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1527234240p2/18056427.jpg].
It had juicy drama, slight creepy-ness, lyrical writing, sweetness, engaging atmosphere, mythical magic, little bit of mystery. Nice mixed bag.
I will be looking out for the next from [a:D.M. Cameron|18056427|D.M. Cameron|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1527234240p2/18056427.jpg].
lauraen's review
5.0
The quote on the front of this book says that it is as immersive as a tropical night, and I found that to be very true.
lisa_setepenre's review
2.0
When I finished reading this, I rated it three stars. It was, to my mind, a solid read but nothing spectacular. Interweaving Irish folklore into an Australian setting, Beneath the Mother Tree is a lyrically-written, engaging read that keeps you wondering until the end how much is real and how much is delusion and fantasy. But I kept thinking about the book and not in positive terms. While it remains an engrossing read, I think my issues come from the fact that it doesn’t want to answer the question of how much of the story is fantasy to the point where the book feels like it can be interpreted as a fairy tale and that is the interpretation the author leans towards.
But the book also wants to delve into hard-hitting subjects like abuse, addiction, grief, murder, mental illness, PTSD, rape, the displacement and massacre of Indigenous Australians… and yet it doesn’t deal with them in the depth and respect they deserve, with the effect being that these subjects are window-dressing to the fairy-tale.
But the book also wants to delve into hard-hitting subjects like abuse, addiction, grief, murder, mental illness, PTSD, rape, the displacement and massacre of Indigenous Australians… and yet it doesn’t deal with them in the depth and respect they deserve, with the effect being that these subjects are window-dressing to the fairy-tale.
incrediblemelk's review
4.0
I feel really ashamed that I was sent an ARC of this book to review on Goodreads, and I never reviewed it. It got me in the middle of marking season and the stress that culminated in my quitting The Rereaders with my co-host and producer.
But I’m here now.
This was such a strange book – I really didn’t know what to make of it. It’s absolutely in my wheelhouse: I love folklore, magic realism, nature writing and romantic drama, and this book had all of that in spades; but I struggled with the prose, which was broader than I like, and with some characters, such as the fretful Grappa, lost in superstition and booze, and Marlise, a maybe-witch, maybe-faerie, maybe-mosquito spirit who makes Joan Crawford in ‘Mommie Dearest’ look like Marmee from ‘Little Women’.
The young lovers, Ayla and Riley, share a purity and innocence that make them the calm centre of the novel, although I wished Ayla had had a different name because it’s so strongly identified with the protagonist of the ‘Clan of the Cave Bear’ books, which kept slipping intertextually into my mind because Ayla is so strongly associated with nature.
The descriptions of the island were rich and evocative, and I appreciated how hard Cameron has worked to be respectful to traditional Aboriginal owners, and to keep Indigenous characters and their histories as a key counterbalance to the Irish fairy folklore. It’s hard as a white Australian to feel like you belong here – your belonging is contingent on colonising and erasing older, pre-existing cultures – and Cameron is striving to locate a kind of hybrid folklore: a way for European stories to make sense in Australia.
I found this project the most interesting and challenging aspect of this novel, as it’s something I’m grappling with in my own writing. I didn’t feel comfortable as I read, immersed in the prose – I was constantly aware of its project, and perhaps that affected my enjoyment of the novel. Do white Australian authors have to ‘return’ to European settings, or go back in time to historical periods, in order to feel authentic, uncomplicated pleasure in the uncanny and magical? Or can we treat the European supernatural as another space that moves alongside and intrudes into contemporary Australian life, as in Jodi McAlister’s Valentine series of YA novels? Or do we take the strict realist interpretation of attributing belief in the supernatural to culture and folklore alone: it seems real to the characters, but is not objectively, tangibly real?
But I’m here now.
This was such a strange book – I really didn’t know what to make of it. It’s absolutely in my wheelhouse: I love folklore, magic realism, nature writing and romantic drama, and this book had all of that in spades; but I struggled with the prose, which was broader than I like, and with some characters, such as the fretful Grappa, lost in superstition and booze, and Marlise, a maybe-witch, maybe-faerie, maybe-mosquito spirit who makes Joan Crawford in ‘Mommie Dearest’ look like Marmee from ‘Little Women’.
The young lovers, Ayla and Riley, share a purity and innocence that make them the calm centre of the novel, although I wished Ayla had had a different name because it’s so strongly identified with the protagonist of the ‘Clan of the Cave Bear’ books, which kept slipping intertextually into my mind because Ayla is so strongly associated with nature.
The descriptions of the island were rich and evocative, and I appreciated how hard Cameron has worked to be respectful to traditional Aboriginal owners, and to keep Indigenous characters and their histories as a key counterbalance to the Irish fairy folklore. It’s hard as a white Australian to feel like you belong here – your belonging is contingent on colonising and erasing older, pre-existing cultures – and Cameron is striving to locate a kind of hybrid folklore: a way for European stories to make sense in Australia.
I found this project the most interesting and challenging aspect of this novel, as it’s something I’m grappling with in my own writing. I didn’t feel comfortable as I read, immersed in the prose – I was constantly aware of its project, and perhaps that affected my enjoyment of the novel. Do white Australian authors have to ‘return’ to European settings, or go back in time to historical periods, in order to feel authentic, uncomplicated pleasure in the uncanny and magical? Or can we treat the European supernatural as another space that moves alongside and intrudes into contemporary Australian life, as in Jodi McAlister’s Valentine series of YA novels? Or do we take the strict realist interpretation of attributing belief in the supernatural to culture and folklore alone: it seems real to the characters, but is not objectively, tangibly real?
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