Is the exercise of judgment the reason for a book review? I hate the idea of that. I would rather experiment with the genre by asking if it can add something to the book, like a mole or a prosthesis. In the process, could one also say something about how the book works, as it moves through its various environments, collecting other growths? I think John Kinsella would appreciate this eco-critical move, for what it ultimately wants to interrogate is the way the book sustains its life. And then, having confessed to that vitalist position, may I go on to ask what the book has to say about Life? Why not tackle the big issue, the writer’s vision?

One would not call a book Post-colonial without wishing to engage that body of theoretical literature that still remains strong in the academy. Post-colonial studies always sourced its energy from two types of critique: from the political, because that drove various anti-imperialist independence movements; and from the literary, because the new nationalisms and identities emerging post-independence were, and remain, vitally negotiated in literary experimentation. The composers of stories were also builders of new nations, and vice versa. Kinsella’s post-colonial writing, if anything, deconstructs Australian national identity in a writing composed in fragments. It is composed, in fits and starts, on and about a fragment of Australia (the Cocos-Keeling islands) way off that Western Australian coast about which he so often writes.