This book came via my old friend Kate - a passionate supporter of Australian literature as well as holding a doctorate in Aboriginal social history - who recommended it to me almost tearfully, having just read it. And I see now where that feeling was coming from. I have read no better exploration penned by a non-Aboriginal person of the Aboriginal link to land and country. In a story that has no real conflict, few major dramatic episodes, and a climax that plays more like an emerging iceberg, Miller breaks almost all the rules of fiction to create a profound achievement that may be one of the few legitimate candidates for the gong of The Great Australian Novel.In a very gentle narrative style, full of whimsical descriptions of the land and weather, the story leads you further and further from its beginnings in drizzly suburban Melbourne, where the character Annabelle Beck receives a shock, to the dry and starkly beautiful wilds of central Queensland, the stone country of the title. Miller is careful not to make the transition too severe: trappings of city life are remnant throughout the first half of the book but by the second it is all campfires, lonely country roads, and sleeping rough. In this way it mesmerises the reader, and you are taken on the journey also; away from the familiar and the urbane into a new world that lives alongside the coast-hugging concerns of most of us. There is a love story, where family and even colonial history are melded, sometimes uncomfortably, but where the otherness of both lovers is constant, like in real life. It is in this powerful recreation of "real life" that the book spends most of its time, and hooks the reader so successfully. Slow but unlaboured descriptions of meal preparation and eating, the consideration of the movement of insects, and conversations consisting of murmurs and parts of speech left hanging are so common as to create the main refrain of the book.
But this is belying the greater purpose of the novel: this exploration and explanation of what Australia means to the characters, and, by default, us. From ancient cultural links, through colonisation and the arrogant attempts at settlement by Europeans, to the eclectic mix of both that has resulted in our modern outlook on home and Australianness, Miller succeeds in giving all claims equal gravity, despite their unequal status. These feelings are often in the mouths of characters, but the writing never becomes didactic - like the country it seeks to define, it speaks volumes by simply presenting itself and saying what do you make of this? I was by turns moved, horrified, informed and reminded by the facts of white colonisation of this country, and the climax I spoke of earlier had me gulping with despair.
When you read this, however, and you must read this if you're interested in the country you live in, don't expect a strident good talking-to, Mother Greer-style. You will be entranced by the journey and relate to all the characters, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. It is a love poem to Queensland and to Australia, a sometimes melancholy tribute to what has been, and, in the consummation of the central story, a cry of hope for what could be.
The wrap-up:
Australian themes - Doesn't avoid any of the big issues facing us today. Bravely direct.
Australian characters - A small but select group of Australians from all walks of life.
Australian settings - Expect evocative descriptions of the Queensland outback but also beloved big and small towns: Townsville, Mackay, Brisbane, Melbourne.
Australian voices - Perhaps the best literary representation of how Australians actually speak? A treatise on Aboriginal English?
Australian focus - Alex Miller obviously loves his adopted country and you will love it more too.
