Unsettled (Kate Grenville, Black Inc)

Two decades after The Secret River, Kate Grenville sets out on a truth-telling road trip in Unsettled, reflecting on many versions of this critical question: ‘What do we do with the fact that we’re beneficiaries of a violent past?’ I found that Grenville’s most detailed answer lay in the way she told this story, revisiting her family history and the sites — stolen land — on which it is situated. Several other recent books by non-Indigenous Australians (or ‘balanda’, as Grenville calls them, using a Macassan word) would sit nearby Unsettled, including Bonny Cassidy’s Monument and David Marr’s Killing for Country. In comparison, I’d suggest Unsettled for a balanda reader a little earlier in their learning; there is little assumed knowledge here, and Grenville carefully contests common arguments against truth-telling. Perhaps because of this angle and Grenville’s framing of this work as a solitary reflective endeavour, there were times when I yearned for more, especially around the what do we do part of that question. The book’s emphasis on family trees, memorials, hauntings and legacies also reminded me of the need to acknowledge continuity in First Nations cultures and lives despite the colonial violence that Grenville describes — and the ongoing colonial harms beyond those in past generations. Grenville herself acknowledges the incompleteness of Unsettled, yet for many readers, it may serve as a meaningful invitation to begin their own truth-telling journey.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Angela Glindemann is a queer writer based in Naarm/Melbourne. She works as an editor for Books+Publishing. 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.

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