Review: Anna Dusk’s “In-Human”

by writereaderly

I bought this out of curiosity: the supernatural genre has been so flooded with sexualised vampires and werewolves and lang-legged beasties that an Australian vernacular narrative of adolescent girls being werewolves could only be interesting. Plus it had full-colour reproductions of paintings as the fold-out cover. And it was unusual, I can certainly give it that, but I didn’t really like it. Teenaged Tassie shazzas being gross and boganly visceral and getting dazzas to “put yer cock in me” in the playground and playing out their teen romance-controversies and rages by eating people, I just didn’t enjoy it. It was grimy without being beautiful. I’m glad the author’s voice is added to the world, though; I’m sure there’ll be others who are ardent fans.

Where it came from: Mega-opshop-books
Time and manner of reading: Several days of curious but eyebrow-raised samples
Where it went: Opshop
Best line of the book: —
Reminds me of/that: —
Who I’d recommend it to: —
Also reading: Being Alive edited by Neil Astley; Returning the Gift edited by Joseph Bruchac; The Pea-Pickers by Eve Langley; When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön; The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts