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The Swan Book

Alexis Wright

3.33 · Rating details · 702 ratings · 148 reviews

The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginals still living under the Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change. It follows the life of a mute young woman called Oblivia, the victim of gang-rape by petrol-sniffing youths, from the displaced community where she lives in a hulk, in a swamp filled with rusting boats, and thousa ...more

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Paperback, 342 pages

Published August 2013 by Giramondo

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Jun 19, 2015 Stef Rozitis rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: environment, dystopia, 5-star, australian, 2011-2020, aboriginal, female-protagonists-challenge-2015, women-writers, 5-star-australian

This I going to be hard to explain, because I am going to refer to a book with ghosts and alternative, maybe split realities and animals who are sentient and not sentient at the same time and a weird jumping around sense of time and place as a very horrifyingly believable book. It is the most believable sort of gloomy, hope-lacking dystopian book. I don’t think at any point of the book there was a moment of relief from the forlorn situation of the suffering and dehumanised “Oblivia” also sometim This I going to be hard to explain, because I am going to refer to a book with ghosts and alternative, maybe split realities and animals who are sentient and not sentient at the same time and a weird jumping around sense of time and place as a very horrifyingly believable book. It is the most believable sort of gloomy, hope-lacking dystopian book. I don’t think at any point of the book there was a moment of relief from the forlorn situation of the suffering and dehumanised “Oblivia” also sometimes called “Ethyl” or variations on these.

I won’t say I enjoyed reading it, I enjoyed the cleverness of some of the connections it drew (hard to see if they were “real” or metaphorical within the “story”, I enjoyed the robustness and complexity of the critical tone of it and the unapologetic Aboriginal anger of it. It seemed to tell me “White reader I don’t give a shit that you are struggling to understand this and you are too dumb to really know what is going on here. I am not going to translate or explain you will have to keep up.” And then my reward for persisting was sadness and guilt. I admired that unapologetic tone of it, it reminded me of the time I tried to learn Ngarindjerri weaving and I was really crap at it (as I am at all textile work) and the auntie teaching me was pretty damn scathing of my ability to even have a go. And in between resenting being put down a bit I had to acknowledge that there was a fair assessment there. It was right of the book to put the deficit on me for not understanding what goes on in my own backyard.

I’m afraid that the way I m reviewing this will put people off reading. And honestly I spent a lot of the book crying with how much I HATED Warren Finch and also feeling despair at people so colonised for so long as the people in the book who lost everything (even in some cases identity or grounding). And yet…not everything. There was a connection to place that I didn’t understand, that failed to console me but perhaps within the epistemology of the book it was a bigger consolation than I can access.

I am saying “epistemology” instead of world-view because it is a big shift, not to a different world (it’s very clearly this real world the book is talking about) not even to just a different view of the world but to a whole different way of allowing yourself to construct a view of the world. Nothing is certain. What the text says might have happened, but will get disputed or contradicted in another part of the book. Ghosts speak, animals act and there are painful silences and emptinesses where truth might have been (if we were going to have a truth based epistemology).

A dead president still has power. A marriage….but you have to read it yourself to understand.
If this is a love story, then the girl’s love is for home and country and swans. I don’t think she ever speaks. I find her situation lonely and desolate but there is little evidence she wants people until fairly late in the book and even then she seems unconvinced. You could say she has PTSD but really the whole country has PTSD (human and physical) in the novel has PTSD then and a dizzying sense of dissociation. The (more or less) privileged are (more or less) blindly pursuing their own denial and the dispossessed hide themselves in the thick impenetrable apathy of the survivor. There are extremes of poverty and suffering in the book and they are human. There are rich, powerful, glamorous compassionless people who seem unreal.

I have met people like that. Sometimes “the beautiful people” seem ugly to me, especially en masse and didn’t Eliot talk about “those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning death”? I can’t pretend to relate to Oblivia, I wonder if she is deliberately unrelatable but I find an honesty and humanity in her unrelatability and her stubborn endurance.

I thought about giving the book less than 5 stars because of how bleak it is, how little hope and agency the victim-people in the book have, how little connection anyone seems to make (except fleetingly in almost-weres). I don’t want to believe that we all despite our best intentions inevitably make things worse for Indigenous Australians. But as I kept reading, the idea of “best intentions” was questioned and questionable.

If I don’t accept the future posited by this book as inevitable what then does it become? A warning? A voicing of dark fears of the author? A plea or demand to be more intentional? I struggled with this book, I found it very difficult. For making me think so damn hard and for not apologising 5 stars!
...more

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Jul 30, 2013 David rated it really liked it

Shelves: aww2013, oz-sf

(I would like to acknowledge that Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation, and that I do not know the story of her country or any other in Australia. I have attempted not to presume too much by reading one novel.)

This is an astonishing novel — a book that I would recommend more highly than I currently rate it, because I don't think it's finished with me yet. This is one of those books that teach you how to read them, and I am a slow learner. So, between passages of brilliant, beautiful wr (I would like to acknowledge that Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation, and that I do not know the story of her country or any other in Australia. I have attempted not to presume too much by reading one novel.)

This is an astonishing novel — a book that I would recommend more highly than I currently rate it, because I don't think it's finished with me yet. This is one of those books that teach you how to read them, and I am a slow learner. So, between passages of brilliant, beautiful writing, I found myself bored. Sometimes even while reading Wright's more wonderful pieces of prose, I found myself bored. But my dissatisfaction with the novel soon turned into dissatisfaction with myself. Why was I bored? My earliest answer was that I was waiting for the 'real story' to begin, but as I progressed deep into the novel, as the characters passed over every chance of having a 'real story', I realised that this wasn't what was unsettling me.

The Swan Book is the story of Oblivion Ethyl(ene). That overdetermined name is the first imposition on her that we learn of. She doesn't like it, but she doesn't know of any other name. How can this be her story if she doesn't even know her name? In fact, though the narrative stays with her throughout, this isn't her story. It can't be. There is no 'her': she has no agency, and, more importantly, (don't be distracted by the Prelude) no subjectivity. This is what made the novel elusive and difficult for me. I kept waiting for her character to resolve, but there is none there. Instead she is inhabited by others, in particular Bella Donna, the Harbour Master, Warren Finch, and the community that allowed her to be raped when she was a child. The story of Oblivia is a complex one, elusive, which will, I think, require careful contemplation.

Certainly, we are being shown how people are not just their own heroically independent wills. In addition to all the human voices, we also hear from spirits, myths, and the land itself. Polyphony and intermixture are important themes in this novel. Peoples and stories and language and environments are all juxtaposed and made hybrid. Through both its Aboriginal realism and its science fictionality, the novel gets a perspective on how changing lands and changing peoples need not undermine the fact that the people are part of the land. Along the way, many trenchant observations are made about the invasion of country and the interventions into traditional lives. But not without humour!

Wright captures the rhythms and ironies of Australian speech better than anyone I've read. That this is not one speech, but many different idioms, and not pure, is one of the keys to her success here. Even more impressive than this linguistic act is how she seamlessly uses this voice to create a modernist narrative. Too often, European modernist techniques seem inhospitable to kangaroos and Canberra and bush cheek. This is a book that, like its characters, has lived all over, but still knows its country.

While I continue to wrestle with Oblivia's story, I will remember many others contained within: the three genies, the street kids, the people smugglers. There's a lot to get from this book; flicking it open to any page reveals riches. Expect to see it on award lists next year. ...more

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Jul 24, 2015 Ellen rated it did not like it

A mess of rambling descriptions, symbolism and mythology that didn't go anywhere and was well above my comprehension levels. The plot description sounded so promising – but for me, this book was just hard work. ...more

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Jun 04, 2014 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: australian-womens-writers-challenge, librarybooks

‘This is the quest to regain sovereignty over my own brain.’

This novel is set in Australia in the future: around the time of the third centenary, in a world fundamentally altered by climate change, and where – following an Army Intervention - Aboriginals are living in a fenced camp alongside a stinking swamp containing the refuse of war.

It follows the life of a mute young woman called Oblivia Ethylene.
Oblivia is the victim of gang rape, who lives on a hulk in a swamp surrounded by rusting boat ‘This is the quest to regain sovereignty over my own brain.’

This novel is set in Australia in the future: around the time of the third centenary, in a world fundamentally altered by climate change, and where – following an Army Intervention - Aboriginals are living in a fenced camp alongside a stinking swamp containing the refuse of war.

It follows the life of a mute young woman called Oblivia Ethylene.
Oblivia is the victim of gang rape, who lives on a hulk in a swamp surrounded by rusting boats and thousands of black swans. Oblivia is plucked from this displaced community to be married to Warren Finch, soon to be the first Aboriginal president Australia, and confined to a tower in lawless, flooded southern city.

‘Swans mate for life: that was what she thought.’

And what does the future hold for Oblivia in this novel? Oblivia’s world, with its swans, with its caste of amazing characters such as Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions, the Harbour Master, three genies (Dr Snip Hart, Dr Edgar Mail and Dr Bones Doom) and a talking monkey called Rigoletto. Who defines what is real, and how it impacts on the world? What does it mean to be homeless and dispossessed? In a world drastically turned upside down by climate change, where mass movements of refugees around the world are a consequence of cities drowning, local Aboriginal governments exist alongside high-ranking national Aboriginal politicians.

‘Should angels be eaten, even one, by so many hungry people?’

Oblivia may have been transported to a new world, but she is still part of her old world. The past, present and future are equally important. The swans are an integral part of all aspects of Oblivia’s world. Oblivia may be mute, but her mind is unrestrained. There is both great humour and (at times unexpected) humour in this novel. It is rich in metaphor and full of wonderful storytelling and difficult constructs.

‘A crescent moon moved so low across the swamp that its reflection over rippling water looked like the wings of a magnificent white swan.'

So, what did I make of this book? There is not one definitive conclusion: ‘The Swan Book’ is one of those novels that has made me work hard in order to try to understand it, and will continue to occupy space in my consciousness. Is it about love? About climate change? About dispossession? About myth, culture and reality? ‘The Swan Book’ defines any attempt at simple categorisation, and it is not meant to be read and put aside. I enjoyed it, and I hated it, I laughed and I cried. And above all, I’m thinking.

‘Her mind was only a lonely mansion for the stories of extinction.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith
...more

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Aug 18, 2013 Thoraiya rated it it was amazing

I have been waiting for this book all my life.

Just wonderful. Real Australian science fiction. Not the Australia of the past 200 years projected into the future, but the Australia of the past 50 000 years projected into the future in a work that is vivid, poetic, incisive, intelligent and memorable.

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May 10, 2016 Brittany (UnderTheRadarBooks) rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2016

Beutiful writing, zero plot. Not for me.

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Aug 19, 2015 Jacqueline rated it did not like it

Unfortunately I was required to read this book for a university course, so therefore I was not able to simply abandon it like I wanted to every second that I was reading it. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but when did a syntactical jumble of words become "good" writing? I can appreciate that Wright has many important things to say about Australia as a country and the Indigenous people, however I feel as though she could have gotten her point across better and more effectively if she had put down the t ...more

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Jan 20, 2014 Michael Livingston rated it liked it

I'm not sure I can really review this book fairly as I'm pretty sure that a lot of what is going on here passed me by. There's some glorious language, some snippets of blistering satire and the bones of a richly allegorical novel here, but it's swamped by cultural references that I mostly missed, shifts in tone that left me baffled rather than engaged and a kind of stream of conscious approach that overwhelmed me. I got a lot out of Wright's previous book (Carpenteria), but here I think she's ki ...more

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Apr 02, 2015 Jane (yesmissjane) added it

Shelves: read-in-2015, aboriginal-author, aus-lit

Wow. I've finished. Now I just need someone to explain this to me.
...more

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Jul 30, 2013 Lisa rated it really liked it

Shelves: indigenous-australian, 13review, c21st

Get set for a wild ride with Alexis Wright’s new novel, The Swan Book! It’s exhilarating, confronting, funny, touching, angry, wise and unforgettable.

I am mildly worried that perhaps I should have re-read it in its entirety more than once before tackling writing about it, because I suspect that repeated readings will reveal all kinds of aspects that I’ve missed or misunderstood. Indeed, I kept thinking of James Joyce’s Ulysses as I read: it has the promise of the same kind of riches that reveal Get set for a wild ride with Alexis Wright’s new novel, The Swan Book! It’s exhilarating, confronting, funny, touching, angry, wise and unforgettable.

I am mildly worried that perhaps I should have re-read it in its entirety more than once before tackling writing about it, because I suspect that repeated readings will reveal all kinds of aspects that I’ve missed or misunderstood. Indeed, I kept thinking of James Joyce’s Ulysses as I read: it has the promise of the same kind of riches that reveal themselves the more times you read it. There are allusions and allegories all over the place, myths I recognise and those I don’t, circularities that seem to get lost but perhaps I missed the route, and so on. But you’re not here at ANZ LitLovers to see what an expert makes of a book like this, you’re here to see what an ordinary, interested reader discovers. So with that caveat, read on.

It’s not a book that you read to find out what happens, though what happens is fascinating. The Swan Book is set in a dystopian future where climate change has altered everything. This in itself if confronting, because a dystopian future conjures up all kinds of hideous scenarios, all of them involving radical, frightening social change as in The Handmaid’s Tale or The Road. But by leaving in place the Northern Territory Intervention and various other social engineering policies that apply only to our First Peoples, Alexis Wright’s novel shows us only too vividly that Australia’s Aborigines are already living a dystopian future: non-indigenous readers have to get used to trenchant criticism very early on in this book, and there is no let up though it’s often delivered with the black humour that seems to be a distinctive feature of Black writing in Australia. Don’t read it if you’re not prepared to wear it. The more you think you might not like this, the more important it probably is that you read it.

The central character is Oblivia. She doesn’t say a word throughout the novel because she is traumatised, the victim of gang rape by a bunch of petrol-sniffing youths. She also symbolises the way Aboriginal people have been silenced since the European invasion because even when they speak no one listens. This is most graphically depicted in the blackest of black humour scenes towards the end of the novel when nobody listens to the elders who try to end the farce of endless grief-as-public-spectacle á la Princess Diana.

To read the rest of my review please visit

http://anzlitlovers.com/2013/09/22/th... ...more

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Sep 04, 2013 Ruby Tombstone [With A Vengeance] rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: nope

Shelves: dystopia-utopia-anytopia-will-do, aussie-aussie-aussie, didn-t-finish, indigenous-australians, nopenopenopenopenope

I really wanted to love this book. It has all the elements I'm interested in, but the writing is just terrible. I've noticed since moving to Northern Australia that a lot of people up here only read a few words from every sentence, and assume that they know what comes in between. This book is written in that way. If you just skim the words, you get a feel for what the author's trying to say. If you actually read all of the words, you find that they're often the opposite of the author's intended ...more

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Mar 24, 2017 Gary Bonn rated it it was amazing

I've just finished this. I must have read hundreds of books over the last 50 years and haven't been so blown away since Titus Groan (Mervyn Peake). Not merely outstanding, this slotted into my top ten before I'd finished the opening.
I don't know where to start except to suggest that, if the opening doesn't grab you, you'd best put the book down. It's not going to be watered down anywhere.
Superbly lyrical and bold, you're walking through a surreal landscape - and yet it is so real. This is a worl ...more

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Mar 29, 2018 Bianca rated it really liked it

The Swan Book is set in a future Australia ravaged by climate change. Like sci-fi worlds of a similar vein - Oryx & Crake / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - the confronting power of the novel rests in knowing that elements of this dystopian nightmare will come to pass, or have already come to pass. The social and political truths embedded in the narrative, such as the ongoing impact of colonisation on the Aboriginal people of Australia, add a deeper layer of chilling intensity to Wright's ...more

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Jan 02, 2015 Theresa rated it really liked it

Shelves: aboriginal-tsi-authors

I won't pretend I fully understood everything, but there was a beautiful rhythm to the lyrical prose. It was funny and intense and sharp. It felt really politically astute, too -- Tony Abbott's comments about lifestyle choices could easily have fitted in this novel. It took a long time to read because I needed to give it my full attention and read it chapter by chapter-- not a few pages here and there, and not when I was tired or distracted. ...more

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Jan 24, 2015 Michelle rated it really liked it

Shelves: australian-lit

4.5 stars.

Getting through this book was hard work. It's myth and folklore and reality. It's written in English and Waanyi and Latin, and the rules of grammar and syntax are broken at will. It's confronting. It's farcical. It's despairing. It's angry. It's a piss-take. It's future-set but so very current.

This novel challenged me as a reader, as an Australian, as a human being.
...more

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Jul 19, 2019 Lauren Stoolfire rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, dystopia

I know this has won awards, but this just didn't work for me at all. It's a combination of the rambling purple prose, the minimal plot, and losing interest in the characters very early on in the book. ...more

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Aug 20, 2016 Seregil of Rhiminee rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Originally published at Risingshadow.

Alexis Wright's The Swan Book is a significant addition to literary speculative fiction. It's a genre-bending masterpiece of evocative prose and powerful imagery that blends ancient myths and legends in a powerful and thought-provoking way. It's a novel that has both style and substance.

The Swan Book was originally published in Australia in 2013 and later in Great Britain in 2015. It's great that Atria Books has published it in the USA and expanded its market ...more

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Dec 28, 2020 Rebecca rated it liked it

Shelves: dystopia, uni

“If you leave here, you know what is going to happen don’t you? People are going to stop and stare at you the very instant they see the colour of your skin, and they will say: She is one of those wild Aboriginals from up North, a terrorist; they will say you are one of those faces kept in the Federal Government’s Book of Suspects."

It is a book that shows us the gloomy future of Australian Aboriginal peoples. It was a difficult reading experience as there are many descriptions and not so many ev ...more

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Mar 15, 2014 Nhi Le (The Literary Bystander) rated it it was ok

Shelves: owned-books

I'm so sorry Alexis Wright. As much as I love your richly detailed writing, this book is far too dense for me and my totally fried brain to process right now. Maybe when my life is a little less hectic with uni/assignments and I have much more time to devote myself to it.

Upstairs in my brain, there lives this kond of cut snake virus in its doll's house. Little stars shining over the moonscape garden teinkle endlessly in a crisp sky. The crazy virus just sits there on the couch and keeps a good o ...more

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Apr 30, 2014 Calzean rated it it was amazing

Shelves: dystopian, stella-prize-nominee, woman-author, author-australia, miles-franklin-nominee

This is a brilliant book.

It's political - telling the story of various Australian governments and the general arrogance and ignorance shown towards Aborigines.

It's a love story - between Oblivia, Swans and the land.

It's about language - Alexis Wright effortlessly uses a variety of English, Aborigine, Latin. French, common speak and in the words of business and politicians.

It's science fiction - based in 100 years time after climate change and various wars have created a world of nomadic people.

I ...more

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Sep 13, 2013 James Whitmore rated it it was amazing

I was completely immersed in the language - the poetry, the jolts of vernacular, the flow from one into the other. While the plot follows young Indigenous woman Oblivia Ethyl(ene) when she is removed from her Country, this is really a novel about displacement and belonging for all of us. In a world gone haywire thanks to climate change, nobody belongs anywhere anymore. Everything is foreign - the plagues of wildlife, the once reliable weather, the increasing flood of climate refugees. The settin ...more

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Dec 10, 2014 Chelsea rated it did not like it

I found this novel extremely laborious.

While Wright writes beautiful sentences, the actual prose was so fragmented to the extent that I needed to keep re-reading passages to fully understand what was going on. The sense of place was also incredibly vague.

That's not to say that her writing is without merit or profundity, but the only way I will ever understand this novel is if someone unpacks it for me.

I'm curious to see if her other novels are as abstract as this one. ...more

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Nov 30, 2014 Octavia Cade rated it it was amazing

Shelves: beautiful-language, science-fiction, general-fiction

Hands down the finest novel I've read in 2014. Deeply original, and the language is just so beautiful. Words you can sink into, words you can dream about. Climate change and swan stories and race relations in future Australia. Dense and ambiguous and challenging. I was sorry when it ended. ...more

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Nov 12, 2017 Judy added it

Shelves: australian-indigenous, australia, fantasy, abandoned

I can't read it. I've tried. I've tried the paper book. Abandoned. So I've tried the audio book, abandoned and actually annoyed by it.
I am sorry. I have had this in my list for a while. I have loved many of the authors books before. But
This one is either not for me or the wrong time. ...more

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Aug 19, 2013 Jennifer Mills added it

Shelves: overland-reviews

http://overland.org.au/2013/09/the-ra... ...more

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Sep 01, 2014 Cara G rated it it was amazing

loved it but I need to think about it for awhile.

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Apr 03, 2015 Tanya (aka ListObsessedReader) added it

Well, I've finished! And right now I have NO idea how to rate this! Hopefully more thoughts to follow. ...more

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May 26, 2019 Toni rated it really liked it

Shelves: libraries-act, audiobooks, 2019, aww2019, stellaprize2014, australianauthors2019, womanauthor2019

Excoriating, rage-filled, deeply uncomfortable.

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Apr 29, 2017 MisterHobgoblin rated it really liked it

The Swan Book is a difficult read. There are metaphors within metaphors, literary references referring back to various cultures and ages.

Broadly, The Swan Book follows the life of an Aboriginal girl, Oblivia Ethyl(ene) Oblivion. Oblivia is rescued as a child from a hollow treetrunk and grows up living in the hull of a ship in a semi-dried lake, being raised by a white woman, Bella Donna. The community seems to be a mixture of exiled aborigines, deemed troublesome by the authorities, and migrants The Swan Book is a difficult read. There are metaphors within metaphors, literary references referring back to various cultures and ages.

Broadly, The Swan Book follows the life of an Aboriginal girl, Oblivia Ethyl(ene) Oblivion. Oblivia is rescued as a child from a hollow treetrunk and grows up living in the hull of a ship in a semi-dried lake, being raised by a white woman, Bella Donna. The community seems to be a mixture of exiled aborigines, deemed troublesome by the authorities, and migrants fleeing the effects of climate change around the world. One day, swans come to the lake. The swans seem to be a metaphor for different aboriginal nations, and Oblivia seems to be a cipher for aboriginal consciousness. She is distant from her community and spends much of her time in a dream-like state.

Then, one day, the lake is visited by Warren Finch, an aboriginal politician who has become vice president of Australia. Finch appears to be revered by mainstream society as the acceptable, approachable face of aboriginal culture. The trouble is, Oblivia and the swans can't recognise him at all. Finch claims Oblivia as his promised wife and takes her away to his home in the city where she spends half her time playing the role of Australia's first lady, and half her time effectively held prisoner by Finch's loyal man-servant Machine.

The book considers questions of Aboriginal identity, assimilation and self government. Some of the conclusions seem to be pretty bleak; a people brought up on welfare handouts who are unwilling to engage with the mainstream; yet who have been robbed of the skills, culture and freedom to engage in real self-determination. There are close parallels between The Swan Book and Irish legend. Indeed, the text references the Children of Lir - children who were turned into swans and condemned to stay that way for 900 years - as a story passed to Oblivia by Bella Donna. Opening this parallel to Irish legend opens the way to seeing successive waves of settlers on the land. Hence, if the swans are the Tuatha Dé Danann, Oblivia and her people would be the Fir Bolg, and before them was the origin of the lake under the Nemedians.

Alexis Wright doesn't seem to offer any way forward (and why should she?), but if the Irish legend analogy is followed through, we would remember that the Tuatha Dé Danann were displaced by the final wave of invaders, the Milesians. Is this an indication that the aboriginals are fighting a doomed battle for survival?

The political messages are made more powerful for their cloaking in legend and analogy. The reader has to reach his or her own conclusions, and perhaps each reader will reach different conclusions. This reader, as a relatively recent European migrant to Australia, may impose a different set of cultural values and expectations on the text to those readers who pick up on other textual references. Because, for all the swans, there are other birds. We have brolgas, we have currawongs, we have mynahs and we have Warren Finch. In many of the scenes, the birds have at least equal status to the people. This is certainly not a book that celebrates man's achievements and where cities and aeroplanes and lorries are mentioned, they are depicted very much as pollutants that are small blemishes to a much bigger, older and wiser land.

The heavy metaphor, use of dream sequences, absurdity and surreality make this a difficult book. The reader feels as though he or she is seeing just a small part of the full depth of this work. And it leaves a sense of unease with the accepted values and direction of society. But it is worth persevering with, even if much of the pleasure comes from having reached the end rather than the process of reaching it. ...more

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Jan 08, 2015 Sharkell rated it liked it

Shelves: australia, read-in-2016

The Swan Book is set in a dystopian future where climate change has wreaked havoc on the Australian (and international) landscape. The countryside is dominated by insects and rodents and those that feed on them; the weather is drastic and erratic, floods are interspersed with drought.

The book is centred on Oblivia, a young girl who, after being gang raped, went missing for some time from a remote Aboriginal community. Oblivia chooses to be mute after her traumatic experience – she can’t even rem The Swan Book is set in a dystopian future where climate change has wreaked havoc on the Australian (and international) landscape. The countryside is dominated by insects and rodents and those that feed on them; the weather is drastic and erratic, floods are interspersed with drought.

The book is centred on Oblivia, a young girl who, after being gang raped, went missing for some time from a remote Aboriginal community. Oblivia chooses to be mute after her traumatic experience – she can’t even remember her own name.

The Aboriginal community to which Oblivia belongs refer to themselves as The Swamp People. The swamp community is a product of the intervention policies of the Australian Government - an Aboriginal detention centre controlled by the Army, surrounded by high fences and an unassailable sand dune. The swamp is almost uninhabitable -it is polluted and there is rusting war wreckage everywhere.

Oblivia is found in the base of a tree by a white woman, Aunty Bella Donna, who lives on the fringes of the Aboriginal community. Aunty Bella Donna is a European climate refuge and has followed the swans, so to speak, to northern Australia. The swamp eventually becomes home to a large number of black swans, themselves climate refugees.

Bella Donna and Oblivia speak to and care for the swans and they lead an ostracised life on a disused hulk of a boat in the swamp. Bella Donna is a story teller and tells Oblivia many stories, most of them about swans. The Swamp People shun Oblivia (and Bella Donna) as her presence makes them uncomfortable - they wish she had never been found.

Warren Finch grew up in an Aboriginal community close to the swamp. He is an Aboriginal golden boy, a "gift from God", who is educated according to Aboriginal laws and customs. He becomes a political leader, the symbolic Aboriginal success story who the Government treats as a spokesperson for all Aboriginal people. Warren Finch claims Oblivia as his "promised wife" taking her away from her home in the swamp. Oblivia loses all sense of herself the further she travels from her home - "her world became shrunken, pieces of memory flew off, became eradicated, until even the polluted slicks running across the swamp had disappeared...".

The swans eventually catch up with Oblivia in the city, "... capturing from the skies the small packages of memory of the girl who was thousands of miles from her home.”

By no means easy to read or decipher, the prose drags you in after a time. It is worth reading not only for the story but for the many insights you get into Aboriginal culture and how Aboriginal people are connected to their country. There is a lot of anger directed at whites repeated throughout the story - "After all, anyone could see that the foreign ghosts were not particularly harmful if you got past the innocuous cunning way that they could steal a whole country, kill your people, and still not pay all those centuries' worth of rent."

Ultimately, this book is a group of stories within stories - it is not easy to distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. For example, Bella Donna and her friend the Harbour Master, the keeper of the dune that blocks the escape of the Swamp People, are intertwined throughout the book, even after their deaths. So much so that you wonder if they ever existed and were just a part of Oblivia’s inner dialogue.

I feel like I didn’t truly understand this book, partly because I read too literally, and partly because it is complex, intelligent, illusive and fable-like. It made me wonder how people of Aboriginal descent cope with reading the predominantly white literature available on our shelves.
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About Alexis Wright

Alexis Wright

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Alexis Wright is from the Waanji people from the highlands of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. Her acclaimed first novel Plains of Promise was published in 1997 by University of Queensland Press and was shortlisted in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, The Age Book of the Year, and the NSW Premier's Awards. The novel has been translated into French.

Alexis has published award-winning short stories a ...more