Rohan WilsonCritiques

Vivid, action packed, and tense, we follow a journey of attrition and revenge. One man searches for a lost son, another man (and his hooded companion) hunts him seeking vengeance for a past wrong done to him, all set in Launceston, Tasmania to the backdrop of the Railway Riots of 1874.

In the very-scarily-too-near future, entire nations are lost to ice melt and subsequent rising sea levels. Amid this environmental catastrophe a privatised system of detaining the now-stateless environmental refugees has arisen, and those with no country to call home are held in detention centres dotted around the world. The refugees are forced to work to earn their right to become citizens of their captors' lands. Within this book we see themes of climate change, privatised essential services, monopoly control of resources, and the monetisation and dehumanisation governments will force upon their citizens in the name of shareholder interests. This story is told through transcripts from a court case and the internal accounts of two young people, virtual strangers coming together surrounded by chaos This could possibly be the most important book of our times, a tool to expose the money-making processes that are being constructed right before our eyes. A great book by a great award winning author.

Rohan Wilson (featured here in Meet an Aussie Author) is one of my favourite authors. From his debut novel The Roving Party (which won the Vogel and a swag of other prizes) to his second, the award-winning To Name Those Lost, he is an author whose books offer a forensic insight into human brutality. But while both Wilson's previous books were set in colonial Tasmania, his new novel, Daughter of Bad Times is set in the future. It is a foreseeable future which is uncannily like our own times.

The 'daughter of bad times' is the obscenely wealthy Rin Braden, whose adoptive mother Alessandra is the billionaire head honcho of a corrections company. Cabey-Yasuda Corrections a.k.a. CYC has made its money by repurposing climate change refugees, and the Australian government is only too happy to be complicit in a facility called Eaglehawk in Tasmania, where stateless people who survived the sinking of the Maldives as the ocean rose, are lured to factory work in abominable conditions on the promise of a visa at the end of it. The canny economics of this arrangement mean that these non-citizen detainees have to pay for everything they use, from their relocation expenses to toilet paper to their daily meal, all from an inadequate salary. This makes it impossible ever to pay off their debt but still they go without all but the bare necessities because to do otherwise would be to lose all hope. Those Muslims who have not lost their faith after a man-made catastrophe which has left them with nothing—not even their families—perform their daily prayers on bits of cardboard salvaged from the factory.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/05/26/daughter-of-bad-times-by-rohan-wilson/

set in 1874 Launceston Tas , after abandoning his wife and son of many years
Thomas Toosey must return to the city to search for his son William after his wife's sudden unexpected death. hardship envelopes the town and he his hunted by Titheal Flynn and his hooded companion (his badly disfigured hooded daughter Caislin) . lots of violence and great storytelling .

This month’s book divided our group in a clear ‘loved it/hated it’ form. A handful of us, although admitting the horror of the storyline, nevertheless found the writing, characterisation and realistic setting a pleasure to read. And where some found the lack of punctuation difficult, others found the narrative flowing and well fitted to the character style.

There seemed to be a deficiency of emotional punch for some of our readers. They could not be moved by any of the roving party or their quarry and Anne went so far as to pronounce it ‘boring’ and ‘pretentious’. This in complete contrast to Jeanette’s ‘marvellous’ and ‘stunning’.

The imagery held strong for the book’s fans though and we found that Wilson’s writing draws a clear and far from glamorous picture of this alpha-male world, with small and subtle reminders that these characters are human, regardless of what they find themselves doing. And as a reader you are forced to acknowledge their weaknesses, and dare I say it, feel some empathy for them!

Our discussion tread through the obvious territory of racial discrimination and genocide, but also some interesting historical details from Tasmania’s past, sorting out the fiction from facts.

Short-listed for numerous awards and winner of last year’s Vogel Literary Prize, The Roving Party has found its place in Australian literature, if not into all our club’s hearts.½

Best Australian fiction book I have read in the last few years!

Sometimes what first appears to be a mediocre book will sneak under your radar and turn into one of the most powerful reads you’ve had for a long time?

So it was with the Vogel winning book from Rohan Wilson, The Roving Party.

Tasmania, in the year 1829 was not an easy existence. This small but mostly impenetrable island was roamed by convicts, early free-hold land owners and first occupants, the native aboriginal tribes, who were slowly being squeezed to the land’s limits.
The story’s roving party, brought together by John Batman, a hardened land-owner, husband and father, is a motley crew of farmhands, convicts and two free black trackers.

But Batman is no fool. He strengthens his team with Black Bill, an educated black who knows the land and the people, but possesses the ruthlessness needed for a massacre. They take to the wilderness in search of bounty with promises of money, land and freedom and in doing so trade their own souls in a world that will offer nothing for free. But Black Bill’s eye is never far off his own personal quarry, the much-feared leader, Manalargena.

Wilson draws a clear and far from glamorous picture of this alpha-male world, with small and subtle reminders that these characters are human, regardless of what they find themselves doing. And as a reader you are forced to acknowledge their weaknesses, and dare I say it, feel some empathy for them!

The callous termination of Tasmania’s people is not new, and if you don’t feel you want to face up to this historical fact, then don’t open these pages, for the author pulls few punches on the slaughter front, though mostly through cleverly written prose than clear graphic detail.

There are plenty of superbly descriptive passages to engage you in Tasmania’s natural beauty that will drag you, willingly or not, into the early world of the land’s tumultuous history.

‘A thin water grey autumn fog covered all the back country. On the broad and greasy gum leaves the dew beads balled and the sun showed only as a queasy presence pale beyond the gloom. It was under this muted dawn that Black Bill lay listening to the whistles of scrub wrens and honeyeaters, his hands stained with men’s blood.’

The imagery is strong throughout the book and took hold of me from a depth that refused to let go. It is classic Australian fiction that has a reserved spot on my must read history list.

A literary-fiction take on one small part of the genocide of Tasmanian Aborigines. This novel deserved to win the Vogel. The subject matter and prose style evoke an authenticity of place and behaviour that rings true.
The reader empathises with the hardship of the members of the roving party in pursuing people who live in close symbiosis with the land around them. On the other hand the reader deplores the casual cruelty meted out to animals and vulnerable children with little thought by white settlers.
Thoroughly recommended for people who want to put some flesh on dry historical accounts of settler society circa the 19th century.