Mazin Grace (Dylan Coleman, UQP)

Winner of the 2011 David Unaipon Award for Indigenous Writing, this is a remarkable novel. Based on the author’s mother’s recollections of growing up on a South Australian Lutheran Mission in the 1940s and 50s, it is in turn heart-wrenching, amusing, tragic and resilient. Some may find it a challenge to read, peppered as it is with many Indigenous words and phrasing. The author helpfully provides a glossary, which most readers will need to consult less the further they read, as the words become familiar through repetition and context. Grace (the author’s mother) is a feisty, intelligent, quick-witted (and quick-tempered) child who knows she is not accepted either by her own people nor the whites around her, but has no idea why until she begins to realise who her father may have been—a shattering discovery. She grows up in a small, ugly government box of a home, then spends a year in an Adelaide hospital being treated for osteomyelitis, where she luxuriates in clean sheets, regular food and basic schooling at which she excels. Returning home is a challenge. Her life, with its petty cruelties, occasional kindnesses and, above all, a complicated relationship with her extended family and loving but wayward mother, is compelling, wonderfully well told, and deserves the widest possible audience.

Max Oliver is a veteran Australian bookseller and compulsive reader

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Category: Reviews