Back in late 2011, I wrote a Monday Musings post on 19th century Australian Gothic. I’ve always intended to post more on the topic, including one on Tasmanian Gothic. Well, here’s a start, because Sarah Kanake’s debut novel, Sing fox to me, is a good example of modern Tasmanian Gothic. I wrote in my first post that “Australia had (and has) plenty to inspire a Gothic imagination: strange unforgiving nightmarish landscapes, weird vegetation and imaginary creatures”. I was referring then primarily to the outback, but Tasmania, while not exactly “the outback”, has plenty to excite the Gothic imagination.
Why does pretty, verdant Tasmania work so well for a Gothic sensibility? To start with it has some forbidding (albeit beautiful) landscape – remote mountains, dense bush, mist and cold – and it’s an island, which provides an added layer of isolation. Then, there’s its violent history. Tasmania had some of Australia’s most brutal convict prisons. Many escaped, many died, and there are all sorts of horror stories, including those concerning the alleged cannibal, Alexander Pearce. It’s also infamous for the near-genocide of its indigenous population. It’s a place, in other words, in which ghosts and spirits are easy to imagine. But this is not all. Tasmania is home to the world’s only carnivorous marsupial – the small but ferocious and appropriately named Tasmanian devil. And, particularly relevant to this book, it was the last home of Australia’s most famous, most controversial, extinct animal, the Thylacine aka Tasmanian tiger.
Sarah Kanake calls on these, together with the archetypal Australian lost-child story, to write a novel that’s fundamentally about loss. All sorts of loss – people, animals, homes, and love. The novel commences with a brief unlabelled prologue describing the disappearance of 14-year-old River Snow Fox on a rainy night (of course!) On the same night one man’s home is lost, another man’s leg is permanently injured by a falling tree, and the kookaburras cackle. We then jump twenty years. It’s 1986, and River’s older brother David Fox is returning to his childhood mountain home – Fox Hill or Tiger Mountain, take your pick – with his twin sons, the biblically named Jonah and Samson. He plans to leave them with his father Clancy Fox – the man with the injured leg – who is still grieving, still looking for his missing daughter. Relationships are fraught. Clancy and his son don’t get on; angry, hurt, lonely Jonah is resentful of his loving Down syndrome twin Samson; Samson, with his “extra heavy chromosome”, often feels overlooked; and Clancy doesn’t know how to be a grandfather. The scene is set …
There are three other people on the mountain: Murray, son of the indigenous George, who was Clancy’s friend and the man who lost his home; Murray’s partner, the pregnant Tilda; and Tilda’s daughter Mattie, who is deaf. Depending on how you look at it, there could be a fourth person on the mountain, because George, now dead, regularly appears to Clancy.
Now, I wouldn’t blame you if you were starting to think this is all laid on a bit thick – gothic setting, a hermitic old man, a ghost, a missing girl, unhappy twins, a Down syndrome boy and a deaf girl, a pregnant woman and an indigenous man. What I found though was that while my mind (my rational self) was questioning this, my heart (my emotional self) was becoming more and more engaged. It works, I think, because Kanake doesn’t play to melodrama, as the original Gothic novels did. She keeps it psychologically real, even when unexplainable things happen. She also knows of what she writes. The brief biography provided by Affirm Press says that Kanake grew up with “a brother with Down syndrome and two Aboriginal foster brothers”. This reassured somewhat my modern concern about dominant-culture writers presuming to write for “other”.
“We love a version of the tiger, and it’s not real”
So Jonah remembers his father once telling him. What’s real is, in fact, one of the book’s underlying challenges. Readers have to make a leap of faith and accept that what we read is “real” for the characters. The characters, on the other hand, need to work out their “reality” and come to terms with it.
Sing fox to me is one of those books where the structure, the narrative form in particular, supports the meaning. In other words, Kanake’s use of alternating points of view for the three main characters – Clancy, Jonah and Samson – mirrors the separation of their lives. Of course they are together sometimes, physically, but there’s little meeting of minds and hearts. Meaning is also supported by strong, sustained imagery. Nature works on both physical and metaphorical levels. Clancy’s tiger pelt, worn by Clancy and then stolen by Jonah, seems to live and breathe. The mountains, rivers and trees are similarly active.
… he [Clancy] wanted to tell Murray that something had changed on his mountain. The boys were waking things up, stirring life back into old death. (Part 3)
The trees relaxed and the leaves swayed, almost as if they could finally breathe. The creek rushed, not because it was chasing anything, but because it longed to feel the smooth and stable rocks underneath … (Part 6)
Kookaburras act as a sort of malevolent chorus. Their “cackling” laughter resounds throughout the book as a commentary on the misguided quests going on below them. They are there in the beginning when Clancy realises River is lost – “the laughter turned to cackling as the kookaburras gathered in the branches overhead” – and they are there when he realises the futility of his obsessive twenty-year long obsessive quest:
Finally he understood the kookaburras, those buggers at the end of their fucking tethers. Those damned birds knew he should have been laughing with them all along.
“Feeling sorry was in every real Tasmanian’s blood”
Kanake packs a lot into her imagery – and I haven’t begun to tease out all the permutations. I haven’t talked about Jonah’s love of another tiger, Shere Khan, for example, or of the fox motif. There’s also a lovely portrayal of disability in the novel, which I might explore another day. Most of it does, however, come back to loss. Children go missing, parents leave, a friend and a wife have died; animals are lost or killed or extinct. These losses are personal, but there could also be a political reading. Am I being too fanciful to suggest that Clancy’s loss of River, the girl who “said she could sing the tigers to her”, and his futile, obsessive search, could be read as Tasmania’s loss of the Tiger, and the desperate hope that the next claimed sighting will be real? Or that through telling a story about loss and personal ghosts, Kanake is also calling attention to the ghosts of Tasmania’s past?
A step too far? Perhaps. But this book is such a rich read that it invites a very personal response. I’d love to hear from others who have read it.
Sarah Kanake
Sing fox to me
South Melbourne: Affirm Press, 2016
266pp.
ISBN: 9781922213679
(Review copy courtesy Affirm Press)
Whispering Gums 
Ooh, this does sound like a rich book. I like it when the gothic stays with the psychologically real. It is so easy to slip into melodrama and while I like a good melodrama now and then I much prefer the chill the psychological brings.
Me too, Stefanie … and this one is interesting. It’s less chilly, less scary, than some Tasmanian Gothic – more creepy, more mysterious. Allows you to get closer to the characters in a way, because there’s not that real fear.
I didn’t even know Tasmanian Gothic was a thing, although I remember seeing a very creepy movie set there, back in the 80s – which I hated, so tho I like your review, I’m not sure I’ll like this book.
Yes, there have been a few creepy Tasmanian Gothic films, maamej, but this isn’t really light (in Gothic terms, that is, I think – and I’m not one for horror or creepiness.)
I’m not a gothic fan, but enjoyed your graphic review. I’m sure Tassie with it’s cliffs and dark forests is ideal for gothic (Not sure about the outback being “nightmarish”, though Wolf Creek and Wake in Fright may suggest otherwise). Love the idea of ‘the lost child’ being reinterpreted – Picnic at Hanging Rock, the play, was in Perth recently but I couldn’t persuade anyone to go with me. All in all, sounds like a well written book, I’ll just have to think about to whom I am going to give it.
No, I’m not a Gothic fan either, Bill. The outback is a very different “Gothic” to the tradition isn’t it – you think of Gothic as being dark castles with tunnels, which is why Tasmania’s rugged bush with caves works well – but the outback IS nightmarish in its own way as you examples show! Barbara Baynton is pretty Gothic too.
Well how intriguing. Whilst not a true fan of Goth, I am a fan of Tasmania and your review has certainly grabbed my attention. Will definitely seek out a copy. Thanks WG.
Great Karenlee. I’m not a Gothic fan either but I found this really engrossing. I’d love to hear what you think. The writer comes from Queensland BTW.
This does sound really powerful and, as you imply, it seems strange that Tasgoth has not been done more often. Tasmania seems a place that could inspire a Gothic literature in the same place as the American South. A place so beautiful and haunted by violent history.
That’s a good analogy Ian – to the American South. I think there’s an increasing use (is “use” the word?) of Tasmanian Gothic in the last decade or so, but I haven’t read much of it. Authors like Cate Kennedy, Favel Parrett, and Julia Leigh (whose The Hunter taps into the Tiger story too). I’ve seen the film adaptation of The hunter: it has more of the horror and tension of the Gothic tradition than this one (at least as I experienced it) but it would be interesting to see what a filmmaker would do with this.
This is a book for me. I like all sorts of Gothic so I would be really interested to see how it compares.
Great Caroline. I’d love to hear your Impression then if or when you read it. Will it be Gothic enough I wonder?
From your description I deduced that it is more like Southern Gothic than Gothic per se.
Yes, from what I know of Southern Gothic I’d say yes! But the landscape is probably a bigger feature of the Tasmanian version I’d say.
I would have thought that the landscape is where they are similar. In any case, it’s the aspect I like the most about Gothic literature – thre treatment of landscape and atmosphere. I noticed the book is only available for kindle. Is that because I’m in Europe?
I haven’t read enough Southern Gothic Caroline but I guess I didn’t think of landscape as being a strong feature – more mansions, and perhaps dense vegetation and dark ponds, but not remote mountains and caves?
That;s a good question re the book? It looks like Affirm Press’s distributor Booktopia doesn’t sell overseas. I suggest you email Affirm Press and ask them if you’d like a print version. If you can’t get it let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
Thanks, Gummie.
As a fan of European, American, Southern and (because I like to think it’s a thing) Russian Gothic, this sounds like a must read – Tazmanian Gothic definitely needs to be added to the list!
Oh it does, Shoshi with that level of interest in Gothic. I hadn’t really heard of Russian Gothic though I’m not surprised. Are you talking contemporary or 19th century?
Actually, Russian Gothic is something I kind of made up when reading 19th and 20th century Russian literature last year – something about the madness and the isolation and the wide open spaces…
Fair enough too Shoshi. I haven’t read enough Russians to see that.
Literary snap – I was reading this novel when your blog post arrived, Sue. You’re right about the heart v head response. There are a lot of missing people! I enjoyed it but you do need to surrender to it. I had just finished Wildlight by Robyn Mundy, a coming of age love story set on Maatsuyker Island off the south coast of Tassie, more like Parrett’s Past the Shallows in terms of setting. Both use landscape quite well.
Thanks John. Yes, that’s a good way of putting it – you have to surrender to it. And you want to I think because of her characterisation. Wildlight sounds worth looking at too.
I have just finished reading this book.. A good read, though I had a few problems. I did like the voices and setting. The atmosphere was tense and feelings strong. It did remind me of Julia Leigh’s novel The Hunter, also set in Tasmania.
Thanks again, Meg, for coming back after reading a book. As you know I love your doing that. I didn’t read Julia Leigh’s novel but saw the movie. There were similarities as you say, in interesting family dynamic, the tiger theme, etc. Leigh’s novel had that bigger plot which I think made the Gothic element stronger? What were your issues with Kanake’s book?
My main issue was with the parents. Where was Jonah’s parents when he went missing? Why weren’t they contacted – the police could have tried to find them?
Ah, fair enough, Meg. That crossed my mind too l admit, but those sorts of “reality” issues don’t really worry me enough.
Not quite relevant to the story, but last night, on Melbourne ABC news there was a feature on how Canberra is the best place to be a mother in Australia. Queensland the toughtest state to be a mum. Again drawing another long bow; Walter Griffin with the help of his wife designed Canberra.
Haha, Meg, I can accept that long bow. I suspect that in many ways Canberra is one of the best places to be a mother. Just getting around is easier for a start.
Pingback: Book Bait: Sarah Kanake’s Sing Fox To Me | Australian Women Writers Challenge Blog