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A review by archytas
Position Doubtful: Mapping Landscapes and Memories by Kim Mahood
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
It's hard to know where to classify this book. To call it a memoir feels too small, too trivialising, yet the strength of this book is that it examines such big topics - cosmology, politics, art, and cartography - through such a personal lens. Mahood avoids answers, or even really questions, in this recounting of a journey into Country, and infuses her prose with grief, admiration, frustration, more grief, and occasionally a little peace. The book draws sharp portraits, of her friends, her family, and her frenemies, these portraits are a large source of the delight in the book, but Mahood never lets us forget that we are looking through her eyes. In the end, the book gives a glimpse of the world as she analyses it, and also as she feels it, and in this way it burrows deep somewhere inside.
I was stuck reading this book mostly at night, before falling asleep, which made it more disjointed than I suspect it needed. I found Mahood's adventures infiltrating my dreams, wrapping around my Canberra life with this other life in the desert. I've never had that happen with a book before, not regularly, and never so seamlessly. It was both disconcerting, and kinda beautiful.
I was stuck reading this book mostly at night, before falling asleep, which made it more disjointed than I suspect it needed. I found Mahood's adventures infiltrating my dreams, wrapping around my Canberra life with this other life in the desert. I've never had that happen with a book before, not regularly, and never so seamlessly. It was both disconcerting, and kinda beautiful.