Scala Radio Book Club: Limberlost by Robbie Arnott
November's indie fiction book of the month.
In the Scala Radio Book Club on Thursday, the 10th of November, Mark Forrest welcomed the award-winning author Robbie Arnott to talk about his third novel Limberlost which is this month's indie fiction book of the month.
Ned West dreams of sailing across the river on a boat of his very own. To Ned, a boat means freedom - the fresh open water, squid-rich reefs, fires on private beaches - a far cry from life on Limberlost, the family farm, where his father worries and grieves for Ned's older brothers. They're away fighting in a ruthless and distant war, becoming men on the battlefield, while Ned - too young to enlist - roams the land in search of rabbits to shoot, selling their pelts to fund his secret boat ambitions.
But as the seasons pass and Ned grows up, real life gets in the way. Ned falls for Callie, the tough, capable sister of his best friend, and together they learn the lessons of love, loss, and hardship. When a storm decimates the Limberlost crop and shakes the orchard's future, Ned must decide what to protect: his childhood dreams, or the people and the land that surround him...
Mark asked Robbie Arnott: "Explain what Limberlost is, and who this character Ned West is who lives there?"
Limberlost is the name of an orchard in the north of Tasmania, in a river valley. And Ned West is the youngest son of the family who lives there. His two older brothers are away in the Pacific. His oldest sister, who's the eldest of the four of them, has come back to help out, the only other one on the orchard is his father, the survivor of both Gallipoli and the Somme. Ned is this 15-year-old boy trying to keep things together while his family is falling apart around him in this beautiful orchard in Tasmania.
Mark followed this with: "An animal that I suspect most readers will not have heard of is a Quoll which is hugely important in the story. What is it, and why is it so central to the narrative?"
I have a British publicist, and she congratulated me on this mythical creation. I had to tell her it was real. People might know a Tasmanian Devil; it is the largest marsupial carnival that still exists. The spotted tail Quoll is the second largest, and they live in trees. They're big enough to fight a devil off a kill and look like a large ferret, but much stockier and bigger. They're fierce, and they're beautiful. They're brown animals covered in bright white spots, and they will kill any chicken they can get their hands on. And that's where Ned comes into conflict with a Quoll which is trying to steal his family's chickens.
Mark asks Robbie Arnott about the theme of death, which features throughout Limberlost: "That idea of killing and death is a constant theme in the book because you find out at the beginning that Ned's lost his mother and his elder brother's away fighting. His main pastime is killing rabbits to sell their pelts. How does it affect Ned and the way that he lives his life?"
Well, Ned lives very much within the rhythms of the environment he's in, especially with the landscape, and death is a huge part of that, as it is with all farming communities. In a more modern setting, death in rural and wilderness communities feels shocking, but it really is just an everyday aspect of life. And if we eat meat, it's an aspect of our lives. We're just very far removed from it. So, it's a huge part of how Ned's days are governed. He hunts all these rabbits because he's selling their pelts to the army to make slouch hats — this very iconic Australian military hat. And to him, that's the most normal thing in the world. But when he captures a native animal, rabbits here are introduced, he can't bring himself the kill it. There's something within him that has this connection to the landscape and connection to the environment that he can't articulate. He doesn't have the language or the emotional capacity to be able to describe it, but there's something within him that lets him know, he can't bring himself to kill this animal.
Find out about more Scala Radio Book Club guests here >>