There was so much to write about Courtney Collins’ novel The burial in my review this week that I couldn’t share one of my favourite aspects – her gorgeous descriptions of the landscape. When I say gorgeous, I should clarify that the landscape itself isn’t always gorgeous, but her descriptions, her ability to evoke the landscape visually, spiritually and emotionally certainly is.

The imagery draws from the mountains and the earth, and is imbued with multiple meanings. The mountains represent magic and mystery, but also danger, while the earth conveys time and stories. The descriptions feel Australian – and yet there’s little reference to specific, identifiable features, such as gum trees.

Here are two descriptions of the earth:

THE EARTH, AS I can feel it, is pressed together at points and ruptured in parts. And so events seem to fold into each other, like burial and birth. It’s not like the smooth and undulating beauty of a ribbon streaming out. No. The earth buckles with the stories it holds of all those who have cried and all those who have croaked.

and

the earth disturbed and compacting as they rode, all of untold time beneath them.

I love the way these descriptions convey something eternal, permanent, not always benign but somehow reassuring nonetheless. By contrast, here are descriptions involving mountains and our three main characters – Jessie, Jack Brown and then Barlow:

She felt odd—as if some great fissure had finally opened up, and all of the convolutions of herself were meeting at the surface, like so many coincidences at once. And somewhere in it all was her own distinct nature.

Sitting by the ravine she felt her past was not behind her or beneath her, it was everywhere at once, living through her, and the boy and Joe and Bill were just like those she had known before and here on the mountain was something like a second chance …

and

The mountains unfolded and soon he felt with all of his wanting that she would split the summit, come tearing out through the trees and ride determinedly towards him. But she did not.

and

For Barlow, the mountains had unfolded without meaning. The colours and shapes continued to be strange to him and as they had moved higher up the slope he felt the clouds weighing in like the ceiling of a room that was sinking down upon him …

Quite different aren’t they? The mountains seem to be more about self – about defining self – sometimes positive, sometimes not, but often associated with a sense of change.

It’s strong language with slightly unusual rhythms. I found it effective and rather mesmerising.