Perhaps because the last book I read by an indigenous author was Marie Munkara’s Every Secret Thing ( see my review), I am starting to see a divergence in the indigenous literature that I’ve read. That sense of cynicism is overt in Mullumbimby too, and if you read this novel as a non-indigenous person, you may find it somewhat confronting. Sue at Whispering Gums reviewed Lucashenko’s short story called ‘The Silent Majority’ the opening lines of which I now recognise almost word-for-word as the opening lines of Mullumbimby, and while liking the story very much as a meditation on stories and their importance, Sue noted that the character Jo – who’s the central character in Mullumbimby – ‘conveys … a sense of cynicism about humans, of all colours’. Previous books have won all kinds of awards, most notably Steam Pigs (1997) which won the 1998 Dobbie Prize for Australian women’s fiction, and was shortlisted in the NSW Premier’s Awards and the regional Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. She is of Russian/Ukrainian and Aboriginal Goorie heritage, identifying with the Ygambeh/Bundjalung people of the Byron Bay hinterland around Ocean Shores. Mullumbimby is Melissa Lucashenko’s fifth book but the first that I have read by this author.
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