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A review by drillvoice
Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko
5.0
Wow! What a read. It's a pretty amazing blend of page-turner/thriller and a book about race and colonialism and intergenerational trauma. And it works.
The main character is Bundjalung woman Kerry Salter who returns to her childhood home in Durrongo because of her grandfather's impending death. Conveniently for Kerry, she is also fleeing arrest warrants in Queensland. Home, she rejoins her alcoholic and explosive brother Ken, her pious and pitiful mother 'Pretty Mary', and a host of other characters. The thriller part is that corrupt local mayor Jim Buckley is planning to sell off land to build a prison - land that is sacred to the Salter family and that they are devoted to protecting.
Ultimately the thriller parts of the book are good but not great - it all resolves a bit too neatly in the final chapters, without much real effort. It does provide a useful enemy for the Salter family (which has enough internal squabbles, for sure) and also some great moments of dark comedy: a scene where the local police come to the family home to sound them out is very comic, as is an anarchic art project involving one of Buckley's beloved.
What I found engrossing was the family drama and here I guess I must confess ignorance, because Melissa Lucashenko depicts this aboriginal family with its extended web of local connections that extend back in time with unflinching and sometimes appalling honesty. (The location and family are fictitious, of course, but Lucashenko notes "virtually every incidence of violence in these pages has occurred within my extended family at least once.") This is a family with an incredible connection to each other, their extended community, and their place, but one also divided by trauma, deep secrets, and substance abuse. It's a grim portrait and gave me something to think about.
What adds to this and makes the book an extra joy is the authenticity of the narration. I enjoyed the naturalness with which Lucashenko interweaves Bundjalung, English, and the specific lingo-inflected English (apparently) spoken by this family. There's also this very heartfelt depiction of the culture which includes clapsticks and didgeridoo, sure, but also I guess it's more about what the modern culture is. I daresay some people would read this and chuckle knowingly.
I'm genuinely disappointed nobody has recommended this to me before more strongly, and I'm going to go and read Lucashenko's other books.
The main character is Bundjalung woman Kerry Salter who returns to her childhood home in Durrongo because of her grandfather's impending death. Conveniently for Kerry, she is also fleeing arrest warrants in Queensland. Home, she rejoins her alcoholic and explosive brother Ken, her pious and pitiful mother 'Pretty Mary', and a host of other characters. The thriller part is that corrupt local mayor Jim Buckley is planning to sell off land to build a prison - land that is sacred to the Salter family and that they are devoted to protecting.
Ultimately the thriller parts of the book are good but not great - it all resolves a bit too neatly in the final chapters, without much real effort. It does provide a useful enemy for the Salter family (which has enough internal squabbles, for sure) and also some great moments of dark comedy: a scene where the local police come to the family home to sound them out is very comic, as is an anarchic art project involving one of Buckley's beloved.
What I found engrossing was the family drama and here I guess I must confess ignorance, because Melissa Lucashenko depicts this aboriginal family with its extended web of local connections that extend back in time with unflinching and sometimes appalling honesty. (The location and family are fictitious, of course, but Lucashenko notes "virtually every incidence of violence in these pages has occurred within my extended family at least once.") This is a family with an incredible connection to each other, their extended community, and their place, but one also divided by trauma, deep secrets, and substance abuse. It's a grim portrait and gave me something to think about.
What adds to this and makes the book an extra joy is the authenticity of the narration. I enjoyed the naturalness with which Lucashenko interweaves Bundjalung, English, and the specific lingo-inflected English (apparently) spoken by this family. There's also this very heartfelt depiction of the culture which includes clapsticks and didgeridoo, sure, but also I guess it's more about what the modern culture is. I daresay some people would read this and chuckle knowingly.
I'm genuinely disappointed nobody has recommended this to me before more strongly, and I'm going to go and read Lucashenko's other books.