That Deadman Dance

January 30, 2012
Australian novelist Scott’s (Benang) complex Commonwealth-winning (South East Asia/Pacific Region) third novel begins in 1833 with Bobby Wabalanginy, part of the Aboriginal Noongar people, befriending early white English settlers who’ve arrived in southern Australia to establish the port of King George Town. Among his white associates are the military surgeon Dr. Joseph Cross, the merchant Geordie Chaine, and Chaine’s young daughter, Christine, who Bobby perhaps likes too much. Characterized by Dr. Cross as “animated and theatrical,” Bobby maintains an upbeat attitude that will serve him well once race relations sour. Until he dies, Cross is a mentor to Bobby, and then the Chaines fill the position. Short, titled chapters group into four parts demarcated by sweeps of nonlinear time, from two years to four. Always piquant and lyrical, with some Aboriginal dialect words translated and some not, Scott is at his most picturesque when Bobby assists the whalers, bringing boom times to “blackfellas” and “whitefellas” alike. The historical interaction between these two cultures in a changing 19th-century Australia is given full play in Scott’s ambitious, elegiac storytelling (the author’s mother is white and his father Aboriginal). Agent: Kathleen Anderson, Anderson Literary Management.

January 1, 2012
British settlers and native Aborigines tussle over whales, disease and each other's rights in mid-19th-century Australia. The hero of the third novel by the Australian Scott (True Country, 1993, etc.) is Bobby Wabalanginy, a young Aborigine. His intelligence and youthful pliability make him an attractive ally to the increasing numbers of British settlers in the 1830s who are looking to establish whaling ports on Australia's southwest coast. But the alliance is uneasy: Each group suffers from a lack of immunity to the other's illnesses, and racism is strong, particularly on the British side. Bobby bridges a few gaps by learning English, helping settlers out of scrapes and serving as a sort of right-hand-man to Dr. Cross, one of the colony's first leaders. Inevitably, though, the detente doesn't last: Once the kindly Dr. Cross dies, power struggles ensue among a new governor and the Aborigine tribal elders. Grimly enough, Scott's writing is at it best when there's bloodshed: He crafts deft, exciting scenes about the visceral chaos of whaling, and a set piece in which Bobby witnesses the murder of black slaves shows how readily casual racism shifts into violence. But the book feels ungainly overall, suffering from a scruffy, episodic style that often sets particular plot changes in motion but gives them little dramatic weight. The point of view shifts often, and when the focus is Bobby, the chapters gain an even more distancing mythological sheen, making him more a symbol for the unsteadiness of British-Aborigine relations than a character in his own right. (Some scenes that place Bobby with the young daughter of the settlement's governor set up a provocative flirtation, but little is done with it.) The novel's closing anti-rhetoric is honorable but familiar. A few powerful scenes, but despite its research a mostly uninspiring trip to what promised to be a more dramatic era.

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September 15, 2011

When Europeans arrive in Australia, Bobby Wabalanginy cheerfully hunts and farms with them and eventually enters a wealthy white household. But the colony isn't thriving, odd accidents are plaguing both whites and Aborigines, and soon Bobby will have to take sides. The son of a white mother and Aboriginal father, Scott should invest this story with great understanding, and the book won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the South East Asia and Pacific Region. Watch closely.

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