Sing Fox to Me (Sarah Kanake, Affirm Press)

In her debut novel, Sarah Kanake deals in so many Gothic tropes—ghosts, implied incest, a stark natural landscape and the legacy of an earlier generation’s follies—that an alternative title for the book might well have been Wuthering Bush. The story follows three generations of the dysfunctional Fox family through a dual narrative: the disappearance of young River Fox from her father Clancy’s mountain, and the return, decades later, of her nephews, the Biblically named Jonah and Samson. The echoes of the long-ago mystery weave an uneasy magic on the boys, thanks to a menacing Tasmanian Tiger pelt, the unexplained power of which is the story’s most fascinating element. Kanake’s prose oscillates between workmanlike and lyrical, and her writing is at its most affecting when developing the lush, darkly beautiful atmosphere of the bush. The domestic scenes are peppered with ‘cuppas’ and ‘durry’s’, and serve to anchor the reader in the minutiae of Australian life. It’s an adventurous spin on commonly explored themes in Australian literature, but the story itself is told relatively simply. It will likely connect with mature young adult readers as well as fans of Richard Flanagan and Sonya Hartnett.

Myles McGuire is a bookseller at Riverbend Books in Brisbane

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