No Church in the Wild (Murray Middleton, Picador)

Stereotypes and bad press about the commission towers of Melbourne’s inner west are easy to come by, but Vogel winner Murray Middleton’s deeply researched and complex portrayal of this community resists such sensationalism. No Church in the Wild introduces characters living and working in the inner west through four main vantage points: Ali and Tyler, students at a local high school; Anna, an idealistic teacher; and Paul, a cop new to the beat. They are all training for the Kokoda Track as a joint community and police trip to counter ‘long-term disengagement with local youth’. More cynically, it is a PR exercise to paper over the civil lawsuit the district police are facing for misconduct and harassment. Middleton’s chops as a short story writer are on display in his debut long-form fiction work, as he deftly layers vignettes like overlapping tags on a brick wall. He approaches his subjects with dignity and compassion, no doubt the result of his extensive interviews and experience working as a teacher in the area himself. So many storylines can become unwieldy at times, but Middleton uses volume to demonstrate how individuals get caught up in the system and are homogenised by circumstance. The novel grapples with gentrification, ghettoisation, drugs, race, religion, politics, class, white saviourism, and violence without becoming didactic, while rapid-fire segments and unornamented language keep the pages turning. Recommended for readers who loved Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke or Tracey Lien’s All That’s Left Unsaid.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Annie Waters sells books, writes about books and podcasts about books. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Friday Unlocked reviews Reviews