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Jay, Kieran, his brother Matty, Ian and Josh were best friends and during school holidays they raced around the farm; spending time by the river and swimming to their heart’s content. It was 1987 and they had their lives ahead of them. They lived in the here and now, having so much fun and being let roam by their parents who had been on this land for a long time. But the day the five friends discovered carved trees in a grove on the river’s edge was the day their lives changed forever. Vowing to
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4★
“The cuts were deep and wide, right into the heartwood, like fingers making a river. Scrolls and diamonds filled the space around it. It all meant something. It meant a lot. We knew that straight away. We didn’t quite understand, the way we didn’t fully understand a lot of things. At the same time we almost did, although it was more than we could have explained. And we knew that we all felt the same, without having to speak. It was as if the trees said everything for us.”
A group of five teen-a ...more
“The cuts were deep and wide, right into the heartwood, like fingers making a river. Scrolls and diamonds filled the space around it. It all meant something. It meant a lot. We knew that straight away. We didn’t quite understand, the way we didn’t fully understand a lot of things. At the same time we almost did, although it was more than we could have explained. And we knew that we all felt the same, without having to speak. It was as if the trees said everything for us.”
A group of five teen-a ...more
Inga Simpson is the best nature writer in Australian fiction - the chapters set in the characters childhood around the river and bush are gloriously well-drawn, as are the descriptions of the older Jay's bike-rides around Canberra. The characters - particularly as children - are strong as well. The plot is pushed to the front a little more here than in her previous work, and it's engaging and sharp, although perhaps a little implausible. This is one of those books that you're happy just spending
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A beautiful meditation on the Australian landscape and the Aboriginal connection to it, Where the Trees Were is a must-read for anyone who has ever swung on a tyre over a slow-moving brown river or lain on the ground looking up at a scorching blue sky through the shifting leaves of a gum tree. Told in Inga Simpson’s deceptively simple style, the novel moves back and forth between the adulthood and childhood of a Canberra art curator called Jay. In the past lie tragedies and misunderstandings tha
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I had no idea what arborglyphs were until I read this book, and in this book they refer to indigenous burial trees. Jay and her four childhood friends discover a grove of such trees and vow to protect it. But their attempt ends in disaster and seventeen years later Jay has an opportunity to redress this wrong.
This is a beautiful novel - simply, yet eloquently written, and among other things is a moving coming of age story. And so Australian you can almost smell the eucalypts in the pages!
This is a beautiful novel - simply, yet eloquently written, and among other things is a moving coming of age story. And so Australian you can almost smell the eucalypts in the pages!
Inga Simpson's body of work might make her one of my favourite authors. She writes interesting stories set in places familiar to me and her characters have a familiarity too.
This story sways between a woman's coming of age story in farming country on the banks of The Murray in Wiradjuri country and her current story. Her contemporary story is set sometime after the 2003 catastrophic Canberra fires and before 2016. Probably set close to 2006 because the author mentions the resulting inquest that ...more
This story sways between a woman's coming of age story in farming country on the banks of The Murray in Wiradjuri country and her current story. Her contemporary story is set sometime after the 2003 catastrophic Canberra fires and before 2016. Probably set close to 2006 because the author mentions the resulting inquest that ...more
Apr 04, 2016
Faye
marked it as on-the-shelf
Apr 09, 2016
Cornelia
marked it as to-read
May 25, 2016
Joanie
marked it as to-read
Jul 31, 2016
Jules
marked it as to-read
Jan 02, 2017
Chris
marked it as to-read
Mar 09, 2017
Cate
marked it as to-read
