‘Heat and Light’ by Ellen Van Neerven

2014, 225 p.

I’ve noticed this book bobbing around on long-lists for the various literary prizes on offer, and it has been shortlisted for the Stella Prize. The young author is of mixed indigenous and Dutch heritage, and she seems to have taken to heart the aphorism “write what you know” because the stories are written about or from the perspective of a young indigenous person.

The book is divided into three parts:  Heat, Water and Light.  The first part, Heat, comprises a number of short stories about the Kresinger family which interweaves magic realism and contemporary indigenous family life.  The stories are tangentially connected, a technique I enjoy, giving them stand-alone status within something larger.

The second section, Water, contained only one story and it was probably my favourite one.  Kaden is a young Aboriginal woman employed in a scientific program engaged with research on ‘sandplants’, a marine lifeform that has been found to have almost human intelligence.  The sandplants are found around islands off the Queensland coast that are about to be reclaimed for a new Aboriginal nation (Australia2) under a bold new plan by President Tania Sparkles.  The plan which at first sounds seductive becomes increasingly sinister in this story set in the near future, and as Kaden becomes closer to Larapinta, one of the sandplants, their relationship changes.

The blurb on the back of the book tells me that in the final section ‘Light’ “familial ties are challenged and characters are caught between a desire for freedom and a sense of belonging”. Yes, but I must confess to finding this last section bitsy and insubstantial.  Having only just finished it, I can only remember two stories well- my memory of one probably reinforced by the picture on the front cover, and the final story which was very good.  For many of the others, I only knew that it had finished because there was a blank at the bottom of the page, and I found myself wondering about the point of it.  The stories seemed like fragments.

So, all in all- a bit of a curate’s egg of a book: good in places.   The writing is lyrical, but occasionally somewhat overwrought.  It’s a good debut collection but I’m not convinced that it’s prize-winning material, though.

I’ve posted this review to the Australian Women Writers Challenge site.