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anotheranarchistdyke 's review for:
Heat and Light
by Ellen van Neerven
This is one of my all time favourite books. It is tripartite in structure with two collections of short stories separated by a speculative fiction novella. It explores identity, dispossession and colonialism, ecocriticism, and trauma with care and precise political intent.
Following is a summary of the stories because my memory is poor and I will need a refresher:
The first collection Heat follows different members of the Kresinger family as they live with the repercussions of their ancestor Pearl.
Amy is a young lesbian finding out that Pearl is her grandmother and receiving the curse of infertility from a woman Pearl cursed in her youth for facilitating her gang rape. Charlie is Amy’s father and son of the rape. Colin is Amy’s cousin who is in need of a housing grant from the Aboriginal Centre Amy works at but has stopped identifying as Aboriginal after seeing the aftermath of the gang rape of his childhood friend. This section was impactful but a bit clunky and I struggled to gauge the timeline or how the characters intersected at first instance.
The second section Water is a speculative fiction political satire where Australia is in the process of killing a race of plant people in order to relocate Indigenous people there in a misguided attempt to make reparations. It is a playful section, and the protagonist Kayden has a romantic and sexual relationship with a plant person, exploring what it means to be human and how nature is not ‘outside’s us but innate.
The final section Light is a miscellaneous group of short stories showcasing different experiences of contemporary Indigineity. Those with a male protagonist were a bit stale however the final story ‘Sound’ was astounding. It followed a woman who falls in love with her pregnant brother’s partner and her attempts to intervene as he is physically abusive.
Following is a summary of the stories because my memory is poor and I will need a refresher:
The first collection Heat follows different members of the Kresinger family as they live with the repercussions of their ancestor Pearl.
Amy is a young lesbian finding out that Pearl is her grandmother and receiving the curse of infertility from a woman Pearl cursed in her youth for facilitating her gang rape. Charlie is Amy’s father and son of the rape. Colin is Amy’s cousin who is in need of a housing grant from the Aboriginal Centre Amy works at but has stopped identifying as Aboriginal after seeing the aftermath of the gang rape of his childhood friend. This section was impactful but a bit clunky and I struggled to gauge the timeline or how the characters intersected at first instance.
The second section Water is a speculative fiction political satire where Australia is in the process of killing a race of plant people in order to relocate Indigenous people there in a misguided attempt to make reparations. It is a playful section, and the protagonist Kayden has a romantic and sexual relationship with a plant person, exploring what it means to be human and how nature is not ‘outside’s us but innate.
The final section Light is a miscellaneous group of short stories showcasing different experiences of contemporary Indigineity. Those with a male protagonist were a bit stale however the final story ‘Sound’ was astounding. It followed a woman who falls in love with her pregnant brother’s partner and her attempts to intervene as he is physically abusive.