Review: Melissa Lucashenko’s “Mullumbimby”

by writereaderly

Again, this looked like the lightest and most entertaining book on my TBR pile, and it turned out to be quite the surprise. Slap my wrist for doubting a local writer. Lucashenko’s novel is unabashedly the Northern Rivers made print, told by politicised and creative Bundjalung woman. There’s the quirky characters, dreaded and not; the references to BluesFest and the Writers’ Festival and Mardi Grass and Sangsurya; the evocation of the river at Bruns and Wollumbin and Mount Chincogan; the abundant queers (I love it when a dyke’s just called a dyke); the rain, the rainforest, the beach… Such a pleasure to read this place rendered with such smart-arsey love. The multifaceted examination of indigenous rights is smart-thinking and smartly plotted, the narrative trips along, the characters are human, the language vernacular and gritty, and the book an accessible, informed, good-timer. Well recommended.

*** I predict that some version of this will appear in the Terania Times.***

Where it came from: ED & LD’s bookshelf
Time and manner of reading: An evening of fireside reading
Where it went: Home
Reminds me of/that: ‘Light’ does not mean ‘fluffy’
Who I’d recommend it to: Readers after a good, powerful yarn, be they locals or curious about the locals
Also reading: Being Alive edited by Neil Astley; The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper; The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe