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The Boundary

Nicole Watson

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Mar 13, 2015 Michael Livingston rated it liked it

I loved parts of this - the anger in the book is palpable, the setting (Brisbane, particularly West End) is evoked strongly and the deep-rooted Indigenous perspective was welcome. But I struggled too - the writing never flowed for me, and I found the structure difficult to follow and the flashbacks unclear and unhelpful. The mystical part of the story didn't work for me at all and the resolution wasn't hugely satisfactory. Also: for some reason it really annoyed me that all of Brisbane's landmar ...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Shelleyrae at Book'd Out rated it liked it

Despite reading 63 books so far this year for the Australian Women Writing Challenge, none have been written by indigenous women. Determined to rectify that oversight I requested The Boundary by Nicole Watson from my library. Nicole Watson is a member of the Birri-Gubba People and the Yugambeh language group. Her experience as a lawyer working in Legal Aid, the National Native Title Tribunal, and the Environmental Protection Agency is evident in this novel, as is her identification as an aborigi Despite reading 63 books so far this year for the Australian Women Writing Challenge, none have been written by indigenous women. Determined to rectify that oversight I requested The Boundary by Nicole Watson from my library. Nicole Watson is a member of the Birri-Gubba People and the Yugambeh language group. Her experience as a lawyer working in Legal Aid, the National Native Title Tribunal, and the Environmental Protection Agency is evident in this novel, as is her identification as an aboriginal woman.

While I appreciate the way in which The Boundary elucidates the appalling past and present treatment of Aboriginals in Australian society, for me, the political and social issues explored in The Boundary tended to overwhelm the narrative. There are four deaths over the course of the story, all high profile figures involved in denying a Native Title claim. At each scene red feathers are discovered, the significance of which eventually becomes clear near the end of the novel, and investigators suspect that each man knew his killer. I'm not sure how to explain why I feel the murders were sidelined from the story but they seemed almost incidental to the broader indigenous issues like Native Title claim and The Stolen Generation, as well as the more personal problems of the characters in a novel classified as crime fiction.

Miranda is the Aboriginal lawyer who has worked on the Native claim title for six years only to have it denied. The stress of the trial and her feelings of failure have resulted in alcoholism which threatens to ruin her life. Jason, an investigating police officer, finds himself torn between his identity as the son of a white middle class family and the genetics that mark him as Aboriginal. Ethel, Miranda's elderly aunt, is still haunted by the experiences of her youth. Each of these characters is intriguing in their own right but further crowd the novel with issues rather than story.

While the themes and issues of The Boundary deserve to explored in Australian fiction, I think it was too ambitious to include so many of them within the scope of this novel. Yet this is an intriguing, if demanding book with fascinating and confronting insights into indigenous issues. Well worth the read if you go in without any preconceived notions of genre. ...more

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Apr 04, 2016 Tien marked it as to-read

Shelves: australian-author, australia, speculative-fiction, diversity

Oct 28, 2017 Cian marked it as to-read

Oct 03, 2021 Kathryn marked it as second-choice-options

Shelves: fiction, tiddas-bookclub-list

Jun 09, 2013 Vicki Tyley marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: aww-2013

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