Even before finishing the first of the 700-plus pages of this epic, it became clear that a second reading would elicit more from the text. Then came the realisation that in multiple readings, the nuances found each time might alter. Such is the expansiveness and complexity of this extraordinary mix of myth, satire and allegory detailing life in an Indigenous community which is shrouded in a metaphorical haze and where the ‘benefits’ of assimilation are laid bare.
Importantly, the stupendously good use of humour stops this satire from descending into didactic sarcasm.
The narrative centres on a family of four: father, mother and two sons. Each is the focus of the narration in language ranging from English to Latin, song lyrics, pidgin and Language as spoken on Country. Long, dense passages read like a stream-of-consciousness, with paragraphs often starting with an exclamation: ‘But!’, or ‘Yep!’.
Repetition is a vital literary device. Assimilation and its incompatibility with traditional life is at the narrative’s core. Successive mentions of the ‘Australian government for Aboriginal people’ hollows out that sentiment until its meaninglessness is exposed. And in the background, the community resonates with one voice, like a Greek chorus.
Names are pivotal to understanding the narrative and are far from conventional. Praiseworthy is a fictional town in the Top End where new churches emerge like mushrooms, embracing the ideal of the ‘white piousness of superiority’.
The mayor is the ‘supposed albino’, Ice Pick. The father’s name is Cause Man Steel, aka ‘Widespread’, aka ‘Planet’. Global heating has accelerated and Widespread has a plan to take advantage of it: he’ll assemble thousands of feral donkeys to run a long-haul transport company. His wife is Dance. She doesn’t share Widespread’s vision: she’s focused on butterflies and moths – so much so that she’s designated as the ‘moth-er’. She wants to escape from ‘racist Australia’ and start afresh in China.
The youngest son is Tommyhawk. He’s been convinced by news commentary that Aboriginals are sadistic, uncaring paedophiles, and dreams of becoming a rich white boy. It’s the elder son’s character that underlies the book’s allegory. His name is Aboriginal Sovereignty, and he has disappeared. (Name choices up until his have seemed whimsical, but there’s no doubting the gravity of choices now.) Significantly, Aboriginal Sovereignty is 17: he’s not yet reached White society’s concept of lawful maturity.
Widespread finds a talismanic platinum-coloured donkey in ancestral lands far from his own, has a car accident bringing it back to Praiseworthy, then follows a trail of butterflies to his home with the donkey in the back seat, where he finds all of Praiseworthy mourning the loss of Aboriginal Sovereignty.
His plans appear meaningless now that Aboriginal Sovereignty is lost. Assimilation asserts no pull, either, as Wright satirically suggests: ‘Wouldn’t you rather believe that you belonged to the new sophisticated idiom of modern people spiralling out of control in their self-made doomed world?’
So Praiseworthy – as the embodiment of Indigenous society – seems locked in the in-between.
It’s daunting to read a book with such physical heft, attempting to digest its weighty subjects … but, oh, the rewards. Praiseworthy – more deservedly than any other – will be instantly admitted into the Australian canon. It will be generously applauded and awarded and will forever be on required reading lists. Wright’s already-acknowledged talent explodes here.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria.
The author of the prize-winning novels Praiseworthy, Carpentaria and The Swan Book, Wright has published three works of non-fiction. Take Power, an oral history of the Central Land Council; Grog War, a study of alcohol abuse in the Northern Territory; and Tracker, an award-winning collective memoir of Aboriginal leader, Tracker Tilmouth. .
She is the first author to win the Stella Prize twice – for Tracker in 2018, and for Praiseworthy in 2024. She held the position of Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne, and was honoured with the title of Distinguished Professor at Western Sydney University.
Alexis is the inaugural winner of the Creative Australia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.
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