(By Bec Kavanagh … ‘The Guardian’, Friday 21st March 2025)
The Richell prize-winner’s novel, set in a near-future lutruwita/Tasmania, asks what does it mean to have hope in the face of climate crisis?
When Susie Greenhill won the 2016 Richell prize for emerging writers, her writing was described by one of the judges, Michaela McGuire, as “electric, and profoundly affecting”. Her resulting novel’s release into the landscape of 2025 only makes it more so.
This stunning, devastating debut starts slowly, easing us into the future where the novel takes place, a future marked by global heating and mass extinction. Tom, a scientist working to find and preserve the fading vestiges of plant and wildlife, brings home specimens and treasures to share with his daughter, Orla, and his wife, Elena, at their home in the foothills of Lutruwita/Tasmania. Feathers, skeletons and fins, “eggshells of the palest blue, a tiger snake’s translucent, papery skin”. But this poetic whimsy belies loss, as Tom is forced to reckon daily with the disappearance of the plants and animals he loves.
(Read the full article at ‘The Guardian’)
(PS I’ve changed the capitalisation of ‘Lutruwita’, from a small ‘l’, above.
I had occasion a couple of times last year to question the word’s capitalisation – on the back cover of Thomas Forest Bailey’s new poetry collection, ‘Lashings of Whipped Dream: spoken words ~ ink on paper’ for one, where Thomas had originally spelt it as ‘lutruwita’. The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre offers a map on its website listing the Aboriginal names of over 200 places in palawa kani, the language of Tasmanian Aborigines so I was comfortable at making the change, nevertheless rang the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre in Hobart to confirm. Since then, I note that initial capital letters for place names in palawa kani have become standard practice. Ralph)