Else (Rose Michael, Spineless Wonders)

Landscape and climate are central in Else, the latest novel from Rose Michael (The Asking Game, The Art of Navigation). This genre-bending work of eco-fiction blends experimental prose, poetry and speculative fiction to explore themes of place, motherhood and ancestral belonging. After a series of dramatic weather events, Leisl and her daughter, Else, retreat to their family home, where the worsening weather conditions threaten their surroundings and prompt reflections on their relationship, their family history and humanity’s fragile connection to the natural world. Else’s uniqueness lies in its language: each page brims with homonyms, homophones and metaphors that aim to shift reader perceptions constantly. At its best, the viscous, image-rich prose is reminiscent of poetry (Seamus Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist comes to mind), though, at times, the incessant punning becomes tiresome and occasionally predictable. Michael’s unconventional experiments with form often enrich Leisl’s imaginings and explorations of her family history. Yet, these experimental shifts don’t always succeed, leaving the narrative occasionally rudderless and the tension unresolved. Ideas of seeing the world differently, or approaching language, relationships and imagined futures in new ways, run throughout Else. Its title is deliberately self-conscious, capturing the novel’s continual preoccupation with alternative modes of being in and imagining the world. Ultimately, it is an ambitious work that will appeal to readers of prose poetry and speculative climate fiction such as Rhett Davis’s Arborescence or Fernanda Trías’s Pink Slime.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Alex Durac is a writer and editor. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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