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Blood and Bone
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'Blood and Bone' is the tale of a man haunted by the violent truths of his ancestry. Through his attempt to document the remarkable child-hood of his great-aunt Abigail, we are thrown into life at the Whangie, an austere outpost at the colonial frontier. With the death of her mother, eleven-year-old Abigail must learn to fend for herself against the cruel stewardship of he
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Paperback, 212 pages
Published
June 3rd 2014
by Seizure
(first published June 1st 2014)
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This book sits at the very peak of Australian literature alongside Wake in Fright, written with skill and creativity, self awareness and heart. Never shy of showing its people how they truly are, not how they wish they were. It is a dark and intense look at a time in recent history the majority of decent people would prefer never to have happened and sadly a time that many people wish was still happening. A powerfully written exploration of the author's own family history, colonialism the nature
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Rowan Scrymgeour arrives in Queensland in 1857 with his wife. He has a singular purpose of making his fortune but spends 20 years in cattle driving to slowly build a homestead far to the west of Rockhampton. His life is full of disappointments, his son leaves and his wife commits suicide. He is left with his 11 year old daughter Abigail who rebels against his brutality to her. He treats the aboriginals with no respect and brutally murders a young aboriginal boy.
The book appears to be a fictional ...more
The book appears to be a fictional ...more

Wow, what a powerful and brutal little book about a man's discovery of his colonial past in outback QLD as it was retold by the daughter to his mother in the early 1970s and through ancestral records.
This was ugly in its description of the the violence and mind games waged against a father and daughter and a few passages reminded me of Wake in Fright. The book then describes the man's battle with the 'natives' and with the world around him. He was not unlike Mick Taylor from Wolf Creek!
Nowhere ...more
This was ugly in its description of the the violence and mind games waged against a father and daughter and a few passages reminded me of Wake in Fright. The book then describes the man's battle with the 'natives' and with the world around him. He was not unlike Mick Taylor from Wolf Creek!
Nowhere ...more

This book was recommended to me and it didn't disappoint. It is written in an unusual style with the author/narrator becoming front and centre at times, explaining how the story develops, and how he has attempted to fill in the gaps which exist in historical records. The book charts the early life of his great aunt and her mother and father in frontier Queensland in the 1800's. The clashes between them (especially the father and daughter) and the local Aboriginal communities are powerfully narra
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I was born and raised in Queensland so this novel has some depth of meaning for me, in fact has been highly impactful, even shocking.
The brutality is what comes home to me. Not just the brutality between white settlers and indigenous peoples, but the physical and psychological violence of their lives that was an accepted 'normality'.
This is an important novel, more of a documentary, as it spells out a history that many people of anglo-european origin would prefer not to acknowledge. ...more
The brutality is what comes home to me. Not just the brutality between white settlers and indigenous peoples, but the physical and psychological violence of their lives that was an accepted 'normality'.
This is an important novel, more of a documentary, as it spells out a history that many people of anglo-european origin would prefer not to acknowledge. ...more

Jun 06, 2014
Daniel Wood
added it
· (Review from the author)
Shelves:
experimental-fiction,
australian-fiction
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Daniel Davis Wood is a novelist and essayist based in Scotland. He is the author of BLOOD AND BONE, which won the 2014 Viva La Novella Prize in his native Australia, and AT THE EDGE OF THE SOLID WORLD, as well as the shorter works UNSPEAKABLE and IN RUINS. He is also the founder and editor of Splice, a small press and online review of contemporary fiction.
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