Robinson starts the novel as the Man then becomes the Commandant at Wybalenna. He is driven by ego,tormented by the governor’s ongoing failure to visit,and obsessed with polishing posterity’s image. His foil,the Surveyor,follows Robinson to the island and becomes the alcoholic,cuckolded Store Keeper. They are hard to admire,but Serong gives them humanity,and we acknowledge,at least,their courage to keep going.
Most of the non-Indigenous characters are given titles,not names. The Catechist,the Surgeon,the Overseer,the Coxswain:some catalyse evil,while others are functionaries of the structural apparatus,just following orders,turning a blind eye.
By contrast,the First Nations characters are named. Orphans Whelk and Pipi are fictional,but others are portrayals of real people,including Woorady,Kickerterpoller,Truganini and the great Pairrebeenne chief Mannalargenna.
Instructed by the book’s epigraph from Randolph Stow – “we come in humility,and in guilt” – Serong’s sensitivity is faultless. The book begins with a Statement Regarding First Nations Cultural Knowledge. Extensive research has been overlaid with cultural consultation and diligent application of protocols.
This is laudable,but it compromises the novel. None of the First Nations characters are fully realised because they are drawn without flaws. The extreme care that Serong has exercised has the unfortunate consequence of rendering them less interesting. This is where Australian literary culture is at. The respect is important,but the outcomes can be counterproductive.
To his credit,Serong makes the limitation work with Mannalargenna. He towers over the narrative,a repository of colonial lies and stubborn honour,however inscrutable. Conceivably,the homogeneity of the other First Nations characters is deliberate,a way of throwing into relief settler attitudes. More probably this is a phase we are in as a society. Literature (and the world) will benefit when dignity,scrutiny and understanding are conferred equally and automatically.
This is a novel of empathy and intelligence,jolted by the occasional efflorescence of sickening violence. It pursues the tendrils of past evil that infect contemporary society,and probes the different shapes of religious madness. There is also subtle reflectiveness:“It was the usual problem. That you knew and could not bear to know. That,whatever you knew,the power to affect it was unimaginable.” (Consider the ambiguity in that last sentence.)
Has Serong done the right thing by tackling this story? If settlers are going to own colonialism’s sins,narratives humanising historical figures – a reminder that it is not just bad people who are implicit in bad deeds – help explicate not just the past,but now.
Serong writes of one character,“people adjust to the most remarkable things. Now she could hear a child screaming in her own house and not feel the least distress.” We loathe this immoral collaboration,keeping silent about abuse – until we think of 10-year-olds locked in jails in this place at this time,and remember that the finest historical novels always contain a mirror.