The Natural Way of Things in Aussie Readers

Jul 31, 2015 Brenda rated it it was amazing

Shelves: aussie-authors, sent-by-publisher, contemporary-fiction, 2015-release, own-read, arc, favourites, won

Nineteen year old Yolanda Kovacs woke to uncertainty and strangeness. Dressed in an old fashioned and scratchy nightgown - unable to remember how she got wherever she was; why she was there and who had put her there. In another room Verla had also woken; confused, disorientated, drugged – she sat on a chair and waited. When Yolanda was brought to Verla’s room, their thoughts consumed them but they didn’t speak; when the door opened and the man said “Who wants to go first?” their fear was palpabl Nineteen year old Yolanda Kovacs woke to uncertainty and strangeness. Dressed in an old fashioned and scratchy nightgown - unable to remember how she got wherever she was; why she was there and who had put her there. In another room Verla had also woken; confused, disorientated, drugged – she sat on a chair and waited. When Yolanda was brought to Verla’s room, their thoughts consumed them but they didn’t speak; when the door opened and the man said “Who wants to go first?” their fear was palpable.

Far out in the stark and lonely desert in the middle of Australia was a vast property; but this wasn’t a property bustling with sheep or cattle – it had been abandoned; surrounded by a high electric fence, the buildings in the centre were run-down and desolate. Here, Yolanda, Verla and eight other girls were imprisoned; their guards, two men who were cruel and vicious, and who took great delight in beating them, plus a woman who called herself the nurse.

Shaved completely bald and dressed in filthy uniforms, the young women were chained together and marched to where they had to go – fed slops and made to work from dawn to dusk. They were locked in their rooms each night and the threats from their jailers meant they were terrified, fearful for their lives. But as the days turned into weeks and the relentless heat caused sunburn and more, they struggled to discover the reasons for their incarceration. Yolanda and Verla formed an alliance; the other women formed small groups – and gradually things changed…

Slowly the food began to run out – the jailers were becoming nervous. What was happening? Had they all, including their guards, been abandoned? Could Yolanda devise a plan? What would happen to these poor victimised women whom it appeared no one was looking for?

Wow! What an amazing book! The Natural Way of Things by Aussie author Charlotte Wood has blown me away! I struggled with this review as I feel it’s hard to do justice to the author’s writing; I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I finished, and I would have to say it is definitely one of my favourites for the year. Intense, imaginative and utterly extraordinary The Natural Way of Things is profound and unputdownable. I have no hesitation in recommending it extremely highly to all.

With thanks to The Reading Room and Allen & Unwin for my copy to read and review.
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Nov 14, 2015 PattyMacDotComma rated it really liked it

Shelves: australian-author, award-win-listed, chcc-library

4★
It’s 5-star writing but I disliked the story too much to rate it any higher. In fact, I ended up skimming the last part of the book because I didn’t care what further atrocities befell the women, whether or not they 'deserved' it.

Young women wake up in a desert compound, apparently recovering from being drugged. All appear to have had some notoriety or fame because of affairs or loose behaviour, and they’re now being punished and treated like prisoners.

They wake up alone, terrified, and are co ...more

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Jul 09, 2015 Michael Livingston rated it it was amazing

Oof. Angry, brutal and memorable - I'll be thinking about this one for ages. ...more

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Sep 24, 2017 Lia added it

Shelves: australian, bookclub, female-authors

No. Just no.

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Apr 25, 2017 Tracey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, australian, literature, 2017

A group of ten young women find themselves imprisoned on a dilapidated property in the Australian outback. They have no idea how long they will remain and all are forced to shave their heads and wear strange uniforms. They are lorded over by three employees, two young men their jailers and a woman who plays nurse. Over all of them is the mysterious security company that impacts on all their lives.
I have wanted to read this book for some time but as it has won a slew of awards for me that usually A group of ten young women find themselves imprisoned on a dilapidated property in the Australian outback. They have no idea how long they will remain and all are forced to shave their heads and wear strange uniforms. They are lorded over by three employees, two young men their jailers and a woman who plays nurse. Over all of them is the mysterious security company that impacts on all their lives.
I have wanted to read this book for some time but as it has won a slew of awards for me that usually does not bode well. I have to say I am kicking myself for not coming to this book so much earlier. It is quite an amazing story and Wood does something extraordinary she makes you the reader, the 11th person in the story.
You find yourself brought into the story as the characters do. You have the same questions as they do. Why are we here, why do we not run, where do we run to? All these questions and you are trying to reason what is happening. Through the whole narrative you are only given as much information as the women in the group have and it is wonderful. You never really get any answers but neither do the women in the group. I really enjoyed that as a reader as I was constantly engaged and felt part of what was going on.
The primary focus is on two characters Verla and Yolanda from different backgrounds, who form a friendship. It is through these two women that we understand the other young women and come to know them. Nobody is painted in a good light, nobody is perfect in this book and you revile and feel sympathy for all the characters. Even the biggest bully Boncer, who terrorises and beats the girls has a moment when you realise he is young man with a family.
Wood is a skilful writer and she captures the hardness of the Australian outback. Her writing is concise and the pacing is wonderful. All the characters lift off the page and are beautifully flawed.
This novel is bleak, dark and utterly compelling. There are layers and layers of meaning, themes and study of character. This novel is deserving of all the accolades and more. It is a stunning novel.
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Sep 20, 2015 Joanie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: aus, futuristic-dystopian, survival, friendship, favourites, bullying, animals

WOW!!!!

One of the most amazing books I have ever read - with writing in technicolour. Writing so good that I felt I was in this prison sharing the women's horrors.

Although the end was enigmatic and I couldn't quite get my head around it - the book will live with me for some time to come.

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Sep 17, 2016 Magdalena added it

I’ve had The Natural Way of Things on my bookshelf for months, and I’m sorry I left it so long. Since I received it last September, the book won three major awards including this year’s Stella Prize, and shortlisted for a whole bunch of others, including the Miles Franklin. It’s easy to see why. The book is stunning—a virtuosity of writing and storytelling that is at once enlightening and deeply chilling. The story immediately places the reader into a situation of cognitive dissonance that never I’ve had The Natural Way of Things on my bookshelf for months, and I’m sorry I left it so long. Since I received it last September, the book won three major awards including this year’s Stella Prize, and shortlisted for a whole bunch of others, including the Miles Franklin. It’s easy to see why. The book is stunning—a virtuosity of writing and storytelling that is at once enlightening and deeply chilling. The story immediately places the reader into a situation of cognitive dissonance that never dissipates. Nineteen year old Yolanda Kovacs awakes in the dark to the sounds of birds, and realizes she is imprisoned, her handbag, clothing and other things gone. After another girl, Verla, is ushered in, the girls both have their heads shaved with a brutality that might fit in a concentration camp. They are then dressed in old fashioned, Amish style clothing and put into a room with eight other women who have been drugged, shorn, and ultimately chained together behind an electric wire fence. As they are marched to the cages they’ll be living in, the girls are brutally mistreated, both verbally and physically.

The story of the girls' imprisonment unfolds slowly, with a controlled series of revelations that keeps the reader in as much darkness as the protagonists. Revelation takes place in small illuminations amidst the pain, torment, work, betrayals, and emotional adjustments to the nightmarish reality. The desire to uncover the truth about what has happened, and ease some of the tension pushes the story along very quickly, using a dreamlike logic that allows for poetic concatenation:

Then a determined, rhythmic crashing starts up through the trees, through the viney cloth draped all about her like torn circus tents. Her horse! But even before she turns she knows it is not her horse but Boncer. She is caught; It was always coming. She turns as in a dream for him to shoot her, rape her, bludgeon her. (135)

Sexism might be the elephant in the room, never named but permeating the scene. In this dystopian fable, toxic masculinity has gone so far to its conclusions, that it becomes the antagonist. The brutal misogyny at play here is far more pervasive than the repeated beatings given by Boncer, the most violent of the two unpleasant gaolers. Though Boncer is a hateful character, he is no more in control than the girls are. He is as much trapped by the ‘natural way of things’, typified by the electrified fence, the control exerted by the “company,” and their allotted roles, as the girls are:

Then she saw Boner’s white-knuckled hold on the leash strap. Saw his skinny pale mosquito-bitten wrists. She saw, finally, what Boncer was: a stupid ugly child, underfed, afraid. He saw his pocked old acne scars.

Pity fought fear. (142)

The corporate behemoth behind the imprisonment, "Hardings International”, becomes emblematic of society itself - those things we sanction in the name of what is and isn’t natural. I italicise the word natural because the word takes on a myriad of meanings in this book, some hinting at societal norms, and others implying a deeper kind of natural--the bush, the animals, our underlying selves. There are plenty of moments in this book when it would be easier to look away: the violence of Boncer’s whip or the numerous deaths and disintegration of the characters, but the most disturbing is the the intensity of the girl’s desire for high-end beauty products, typified by the Phaedra giveaway bags. This is the point at which the book truly shifts away from a dystopia ‘what if’ exploring a scenario taken to its extreme end, to a searing insight into a modern day imprisonment we’re all implicit in. The matrix is revealed:

And she stood in the street before the Louboutin window, that vertical slipper with its red needle heel poised in the glass dome like a jewel, a test tube, a syringe. Like a pharmaceutical thing to enhance you, heal you, cure you. (304)

Even at its most horrific, the writing remains exquisite, every word doing its part in this masterful book. The symbols and metaphors are rich, but subtle, inherent in the narrative. The setting is desolate, and yet there is beauty to be found throughout:

The river is a wide rope of bronze silk twirling, and Verla hammocked inside it. She is a creature of the animals, of kangaroo and horse; she is a little brown trout very still in the water, then a twitch and it’s away, somewhere in that channel, scooped along by the river’s strong brown hand. (138)

The character arc for both Yolanda and Verla is dramatic, and fully believable. There is something all too familiar in their stories, in the way they were treated in the media, and in how they are hushed, debased, and punished. It’s a story that we see repeatedly in the headlines. There is something even more familiar in the way that the girls both bond with, and hurt, one another and especially in the way they respond to the tiny gifts designed to pacify them, whether that be approval from the gaolers, or silver razors. This may look like a dystopia but it’s a devastating critique on the standard we’ve come, as a society, to accept.

The Natural Way of Things is an easy book to read but a hard one to digest. It holds up a mirror that shows an ugly reflection of the relationship between capitalism and misogyny that once glimpsed cannot be unseen. Though it’s disturbing, The Natural Way of Things is also powerful, beautiful, and utterly important. ...more

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Nov 10, 2016 Fiona rated it did not like it

Shelves: a-waste-of-my-time

I did not like this book. It was an interesting premise and at first I thought it was going somewhere but then it didn't. I didn't like any of the characters and I thought the ending was a cop-out. Can't understand all the awards this thing is winning. ...more

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Oct 31, 2016 Dzintra aka Ingrid rated it liked it

Shelves: now-reading

What did I just read???? Disturbing.....compelling.....very well written but didn't enjoy it but had to finish it! I really don't know how to rate it! ...more

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