The Hunter

I once had the pleasant experience of working in a fly in fly out basis into the beautiful island state of Tasmania. As is my want I used to haunt the bookshops, mostly 2nd hand, when I was able. With that I picked up this novel about a hunter looking for the last existing Tasmanian Tiger, or thylacine as it is also known. Apparently this is a novel of a sub-genre called Tasmanian Gothic, or at least that is what the book seller told me. This read is in a dark descriptive style with the fear and dread that Gothic literature entails and to be honest Tasmania is the perfect place to have such a sub-genre. It has a dark history from the days of British colonialism that made Van Diemen's Land a place of convict dread. Add to that the near genocide of the indigenous peoples up to such recent events as the Port Arthur Massacre. On my journeys through the state I am never anything but amazed at the road kill. I sometime think I have seen just about every native Australian creature dead on its roads and that can be a very disconcerting view of the road considering the sheer idyllic beauty of the vast majority of the country side. And as to the thylacine its extinction is debatably caused by human intervention. The authorities once had a bounty on its head because it was considered a sheep killer. Which leads to this strangely dark novel.

The major character, an individual called M, is on a disturbing mission to take out the last known thylacine. With that we get a chilling take on his hunters mind. He is a cold and calculated individual who, for most of the time, cares little for anything but his hunt. His generally cold and cool dealings with all he comes into contact with, along with his detached inner thoughts, are methodically told in sparse 3rd person prose that could leave the reader disheartened about the innate indifference of a man.

M stays with a family in between hunting that had difficult circumstances. The reader should have had sympathy, and empathy, for the family but a certain cold sparseness in the writing about them made for an almost neutral feeling in terms of any warmth. “A muscular and robust novel, yet with tremendous delicacy.....” says The Australians Book Review. I agree with the term muscular and if I had not known the author was female I would have said this was a very masculine novel. As to delicacy? I have to disagree. The family, for example, were hardly described with any form of delicacy.

This all sounds like criticism but it is not meant to be so. I actually think that the author has set out to achieve the effect it has had on me in terms of understanding the Hunters mind so with that it is a worthy read for anyone interested in the subject and the sub genre. Just don't expect to be entranced.