It is hard to review a novel when you don’t want to discuss two-thirds of it – not because it is not worth discussing, but because doing so risks undermining the genius of the novel’s structure. The blurb of Claire G. Coleman’s début makes clear that the novel is ‘not [about] the Australia of our history’, but for the first third of the novel, this is not readily apparent.
Catherine Noske reviews 'Terra Nullius' by Claire G. Coleman
Catherine Noske
Published in December 2017, no. 397
Terra Nullius
by Claire G. Coleman
Hachette, $29.99 pb, 304 pp, 9780733638312
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Catherine Noske
Catherine Noske is the editor of Westerly Magazine at the University of Western Australia, where she also teaches in Literature and Creative Writing. She has twice been awarded the Elyne Mitchell Prize for Rural Women Writers, and her current manuscript, the subject of a Varuna Fellowship, was shortlisted for the 2015 Dorothy Hewett Award.
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