Review ‘Gunflower’ Laura Jean McKay

*Image styling © Gretchen Bernet-Ward 202*4

Award-winning author Laura Jean McKay writes on another level of unusual. Clever, jolting and altogether quite unique.

A certain maturity is needed to feel the strength and hypnotic power of the ‘Gunflower’ short stories. It’s not what’s written which holds the key. It’s the unsettling subtext and intertextuality which means there is more here than meets the reader’s eye.

These short stories transcend the written words so that my own reminiscences began to colour the pages. I squirmed, I laughed, I cried and most of all I realised where the author was coming from with each character or creature, for better or worse.

Grouped under three headings Birth / Life / Death, don’t let the idyllic pastoral bookcover fool you. Written with a keen eye, read ‘Last Days of Summer’ or ‘What We Do’ and try not to shiver with guilt. Some tales are one page length, memorably short and punchy. Perhaps the longest story is ‘Gunflower’ a powerful premise on abortion.
https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/gunflower-9781922585943

There is loss as well as survivor moments. As I read I remembered a person I knew just like one of the deli characters Joni in ‘Smoko’ but then grasped that I didn’t know the real person at all until the character showed me their inner tenacity. As did all the women in these stories; Felicity and Barb are particularly liberated in ‘Ranging’ 😉

This book may not appeal to the mass market and I bet readers will have different opinions on what ‘Site’ is all about. First Fleet? Booklovers often have a conservative bent when it comes to the patriarchy and also communicating with pets and animals. We tend to shy away like skittish horses at difficult chapters, but I think the subjects earned their hard-won place.

Brace yourself, this is a wild ride and McKay’s novel ‘The Animals In That Country’ seems restrained in comparison. I do wonder if short story collections are the ones which never flourish into fully fledged books. But, hey, these are thought-provoking gems and many Australian authors never get this far.

Keep it different, Laura, keep shaking it up.

❤ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

Laura Jean McKay is the author of Gunflower, and The Animals in That Country (Scribe) was winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, The Victorian Prize for Literature, the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year and co-winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2021. The Animals in That Country has been shortlisted for The Kitschies, The Stella Prize, The Readings Prize and the ASL Gold Medal and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award.

Extreme Reading Competition Buzz

Warning, this post may contain humour.

There are many types of competition in the world. In fact thousands of competitions exist in the world. From sport to just about anything you care to name can be made into a challenge involving a ball, a bat, a horse, a swimming pool, eating, drinking, singing, running, dancing, driving, outer space, and let’s not forget the longest, the highest, the bravest, the most foolhardy things to outdo anyone who has tried before.

Of course, more and more now, competing involves a chat show panel or video camera following near-naked people running around the jungle working up a sweat for the ratings and a big pay cheque. Celebrity shows, quiz shows, unreality television, cooking, antiques, and growing gardens. From local country fairs to big city boardrooms, they all love a good competition. Supermarkets and used car dealers love a bit of sales competition and are currently discussing book sponsorship—I wish!

Schools thrive on competition; I think many children are born competitive, it starts with their siblings and works toward world domination. Queenslanders have several forms of competition (gambling casinos, Golden Casket Lottery, Scratch-its, leagues clubs) and one unique game requiring ugly cane toads which jump around when a bucket is lifted off them. (See photo) The first toad to leave the circle or careen through the crowd is the winner. Ugh! Cane toads are an imported noxious pest, destroying habitat and native wildlife. I would like to see a competition to have them eradicated from Australia.

Hey, jumping into a subject which would be impossible to turn into a spectator sport—BOOK READING!

Hang on, isn’t that what Goodreads reviewers do? Yeah, but not with a live studio audience. Maybe this is feasible. “Now,” whispers the show host, “here we have Angela Augustus reading a chapter from a special edition of The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay.” Not classical literature so reader-viewers (or RVs) won’t lose points. “Hands on buzzers”.

Adult Content. Australian native animals not include with book © Gretchen Bernet-Ward 2021

Announcer One: “Watch Angela turn the last page, slowly turning the page, right she’s done it! The audience goes wild and everyone at home clambers online to secure a copy of The Animals in That Country an immersive adult experience with subtle undertones and high drama.”

Announcer Two: “Next up, viewers, we have Angus Augustus, Angela’s twin brother. He is quick, too quick and the audience miss his speed reading, lips barely moving. They admire his patent page-flick technique and the flourish when he shoots the book into its alphabetical place on the bookshelf.”

Book reader Angus is studied by thousands of wannabe speed readers around the country. But what about comprehension? Sports players have to speak into the microphone to explain How they did it/Why they did it/What it felt like when they did it. So put Angus on the pro circuit, tentatively dubbed Real Reading Australia 2030, thanking his mother and first grade teacher. He waves battered copies of Blinky Bill, Possum Magic or even the contentious Wombat Stew, then moves onto Bluey, Animalia and Ranger’s Apprentice enthralling thousands of children across Australia—again, I wish.

The ground swell back to paper books would archive digital copies, screens would go unlit, there would be reading time in every home after dinner. Renegades would read Jasper Fforde far into the night despite work next day. It would not be unusual to see readers sitting for hours engrossed in a p-book instead of an e-book without a café latte or muffin in sight.

A book engrosses a person, it takes all your attention no flashy adverts therefore it is advisable to slowly build up to bigger, thicker, weighty classics. It can be done! Librarians offer recommendations for a good Book Gym where staff talk you through a workout to suit your particular genre. Believe me, people are keen and waiting to read. The first-release promo videos astonished me with reader focus and intensity. I love reading Australian crime novels but cannot discussed top Aussie authors due to Brook Paige TV Clause—another wish.

I myself have entered the genuine Irish William Trevor Challenge reading “Love and Summer” please check out my book review here:
https://thoughtsbecomewords.com/2023/02/14/william-trevor-love-and-summer-review/

My advice is to create a comfortable environment and read up on your chosen author’s booklist before enrolling in the proposed *Real Reading Australia 2030. The genres for this thrilling competition can go either way—traditional or modern—but paper format rules. Polish your *specs dear reader!

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward
© Gretchen Bernet-Ward 2023

* Aussie for reading glasses
* This opinion piece is as fictional as the stories I read
(but maybe it’s possible)
GBW Australia

Review ‘The Animals in That Country’ Laura Jean McKay

Australian native animals **not** include with book © Gretchen Bernet-Ward 2021

My reading was floundering until this gleaming gem came along! ‘The Animals in That Country’ is a novel with strange overtones and intense undercurrents. Certainly a distinctive story with fear, confusion and confronting chapters involving the catastrophic side effects of human zooflu virus and the subsequent fallout for the animal world.

Kind of dystopian, kind of quirky,
this book made me think, it made me cringe,
it fascinated me, it troubled me,
and it will stay in my mind for a long time.

People succumb as the virus spreads across the country, or they try to outrun it, and some eventually arrive at the animal park where alcoholic ranger Jean Bennett works. Her initial despair permeates these early chapters, both for the animals and her wayward son who causes problems. Jean is careworn by events and decides to leave the native animal sanctuary with Dingo Sue to find her runaway family.

I may not like the disarray Jean and Dingo Sue get into as the pandemic spreads but it certainly makes riveting reading. I trekked with them along dusty outback roads via devastated townships to reach the ocean. They meet rough characters and conmen but Jean believes in Sue’s unerring instincts leading them towards the hypnotic seashore.

With a singular writing style, author Laura Jean McKay tackles a pandemic from a different angle. The animals and birds are not anthropomorphised in the usual sense, and definitely not suitable for children. At first Dingo Sue is unintelligible until gradually Jean understands the patterns of mind matching physical dialogue, and ‘speech’ is cleverly enhanced by page layouts.

The subtle yet resilient nurturing instincts of both human and animal infuses the story and this primitive and powerful connection twisted my brain. I was gripped by the overwhelmed and distraught characters who learned that we are part of nature, dependent upon it for our existence and survival but it can drive us mad.

As I was nearing the final chapters, I heard that author McKay had won the coveted Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2021. In a statement McKay said she had been writing a draft several years before coronavirus devastated the real world. Apparently she was unwell with malaria-like symptoms while writing and said this may have accounted for the creeping darkness of the story, the uncertainty and panic is eerily similar.

This novel cries out for an Australian native animal bookcover ‘The clouds have parted, leaving the lit-up ghost of a dingo, a pale and vengeful ancestor on the passenger seat beside me … Her hair shifts. Body ripples with messages that join like drops of water in the sea.’
Thoughts on ‘The Animals in That Country’

An earthy, supernatural tale, a reminder of Earl Nightingale’s quote ‘Never compete. Create’ and Laura Jean McKay has excelled.

I can highly recommend the audio book read by the author, it boosts the story to yet another level.

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

PROFILE
Laura Jean McKay is the author of ‘The Animals in That Country’ (Scribe 2020) and ‘Holiday in Cambodia’ (Black Inc. 2013) shortlisted for three national book awards in Australia. Dr McKay is a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University NZ, with a PhD from University of Melbourne focusing on literary animal studies.
LINKS
Laura Jean McKay’s bio journal
http://laurajeanmckay.com/
McKay is the ‘animal expert’ presenter on ABC Listen’s ‘Animal Sound Safari’.
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/animal-sound-safari/
FURTHER READING
Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2021
https://www.wheelercentre.com/projects/victorian-premier-s-literary-awards-2021
Scribe Publications information
https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/the-animals-in-that-country
The Dingos of Fraser Island Queensland
https://parks.des.qld.gov.au/parks/kgari-fraser/about/fraser-island-dingoes/dingo-ecology