Dusk

Robbie Arnotts 4th novel and I have again listened via Audiobook.

This is the first of his very good stories that I had an issue with the audio narrator. Fine in most instances except for the narration of the male characters. There was something forced about the breathlessness that I found off-putting.

Audio complaints aside, it is hard to be nothing but impressed that Arnott has again given his readers a fine tale of the Tasmanian goth kind, one that had me enjoying the descriptions of the land and being fairly gripped by the story of the hunt for Dusk, a Puma, a survivor of several brought to Van Diemen's land to hunt feral deer. At least I think it is Van Diemen's land, as the 2 main protagonists, twins Floyd and Iris, are the children of convicts. And a big cat in Tasmania? Stories worldwide abound with tales of big cats being where they should not be, so why not Tasmania.

The one part of the tale that I liked was the peat diggers being a testament to the past, first nations people that had little to say until it counted. With one sentence alone, Lydia, the matriarch of the tribe, clarified as to what became of all that were ever disposed of their land.

Arnott is now high on the list of must-read Tasmanian authors. His sheer consistency of story telling and his ability to write descriptive prose with an economy of words gives him a power that one could only aspire to.