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It was clear to me when choosing an Australian novel, that fiction written by someone of Aboriginal descent, that spoke to the cultural tensions of contemporary Australia was going to be my priority. I reached out to people I know who are Australian and asked for recommendations and over December I read Taboo by Kim Scott. This novel is not being printed in the UK now, the copy I read was published in 2017 by Small Beer Press.
Taboo is the story of Tilly Coolman, a young woman who has had too many difficult experiences and it's really a coming of age novel and I read it as the story of how she finds her ancestors through her living relatives. The book is described by Kim Scott in the afterword as "a trippy, stumbling sort of genre-hop that I think features a trace of Fairy Tale, a touch of Gothic, a sufficiency of the ubiquitous Social Realism and perhaps a tease of Creation Story." I think it's a good description of his work.
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