Limberlost, by Robbie Arnott

An aggrieved Tweet piqued my interest the other day.  The tweeter, whose username is the title of a book he wrote, was peeved.  “You are reviewing books from 2008 but are too busy to review new books” he tweeted to a bookblogger. Her reply was: “This is a book I bought myself. I do read my own books. And you do realise that I review as a hobby. Blogging IS NOT a job…”

Well, while I have sympathy for the frustration of authors whose books for one reason or another don’t get reviews, it was very silly of him because of course all her followers piled on.  There were responses that could have been predicted: “Guessing your books are never going to be reviewed by anyone ever after this own goal” “This is the kind of comment that makes me put an author on my “never” list” and (a fine example of keyboard warrior overreach, underlining mine) “You annoyed the entire reviewing community”.

I thought of this exchange when I picked up Robbie Arnott’s new novel to read yesterday. This blog is littered with reviews of books that I bought on release but weren’t reviewed immediately.  Some of my as-yet-unread purchases go back many years, a decade or more.  I had bought  Arnott’s previous novel The Rain Heron (see my review) as soon as it was published in 2020, but didn’t get round to reading and reviewing it until 2022.  I don’t feel guilty about this, and Arnott gets plenty of reviews anyway, but (predating the aggrieved Tweet) I had put Limberlost on the bedside table as soon as I bought it, so that it would be reviewed ‘in a timely manner’ as they say. (But I still have five 2022 Australian releases on the TBR and three from 2021.)

Anyway, so despite the #1929 Club this week, and a plethora of reading events in November, and being in the middle of reading no less than eight books*, I read Limberlost ASAP.  And I’m so glad I did, because one of the books I had started was narrated by a foul-mouthed misogynistic character and Arnott’s poignant story about a quiet, sensitive man made me realise that Arnott’s book was the one I wanted to read.

There is so much to love about Limberlost but the descriptions of the Tasmanian landscape are exquisite:

Three days after their wedding they were standing at the base of Liffey Falls, at the brisk death of winter, watching an airborne river thrash its way earthward.  The water tumbled through high ridges, crowded with the princes of the island’s wetter wildernesses: blackheart sassafras, dappled leatherwoods, contortions of mossy myrtles.  Giant stringybarks rose above them all, their gum-topped crowns fighting for space in the clouds.  The forest loomed, wet-dark and thickly green in the morning dew, and through the ancient roots of its trees the Liffey ran and broke and fell to splash the boots of the gazing newlyweds. (p.68)

(The Liffey Falls are southwest of Launceston.  If you watch the video, you can see why this is the kind of bushwalking I like to do.)

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Limberlost begins in the summer holidays of fifteen-year-old Ned West, moving backwards and forwards in time until he is a very old man.  Like the rest of his motherless family, he is reserved, reticent, stoic and hardworking, but he is underconfident in the shadow of his older, more competent brothers who are away at war. His father and sister Maggie are quick to judge when Ned fails to notice that one of the horses has a limp; his sister mocks him too when he thinks that a hawk is trying to get into the chicken coop.

One thing Ned is good at, is hunting and trapping pest rabbits, ostensibly to support the war effort because the pelts are used for the brims of slouch hats for the troops. Privately, however, he is saving the bounty money to buy a boat.  An impossible extravagance given the apple orchard’s precarious finances.  His desire, however, is not just for a boat, it’s for his father’s approval.  He wants to prove that he is competent:

He hadn’t told anyone why he was hunting rabbits—not his friends, not his father.  When he eventually brought the boat home, he imagined the occasion would be a double surprise: his acquisition of such a thing, and that he’d kept his mission secret.  He’d have his boat, and he’d have people’s shock at the casual totality of his competence.  Two victories. (p.8)

He sets a trap for the chicken-raider, but he doesn’t tell anyone when he finds a spotted-tail quoll caught in it by the leg.  He takes the injured quoll and the mare with the limp to Telle, the local vet, his sense of justice telling him that he should use his rabbit money to pay for it.

Huon pine boat (Source: Gumtree advert)

Ned has a mate from school, a wonderful character.  A bit of a rough diamond, but he’s the one who helps Ned find a battered old boat that he can afford.  I’m sure I wouldn’t be the only (Australian) reader who realised with dawning delight before Ned does, that underneath the tatty paint, the boat is made of Huon Pine, one of the most beautiful (and valuable) timbers on the planet.  (See here for ‘what’s so special about Huon Pine’.) Arnott details Ned’s painstaking efforts to restore the boat and teach himself to sail it as he similarly details the coming of age of this gentle soul in unforgettable prose.

(It’s such a shock when he loses his temper over a cat in the car!)

Limberlost is a departure in style for Robbie Arnott.  There are no magical elements and no apocalyptic future. It is thoughtful, insightful realism in exquisite prose. He explores the strengths and limitations of masculinity in fathers and sons; he acknowledges the claims of Tasmania’s First Nations history but offers no simplistic resolution; he demonstrates the impact of thoughtless human activity on the environment but shows that it injures people as well.  Ned matures, but he still makes mistakes, and he still betrays his own inarticulately expressed ideals.

Limberlost is a beautifully textured novel which I expect to see on shortlists everywhere.

*Currently reading

1. Septology by Jon Fosse (chunkster, 700+pages, review copy from Giramondo)
2. A House is Built by Barnard Eldershaw (1929 Club, 359 pages)
3. Daniel Andrews, by Sumeyya Ilanbey (NF, state election next month, 273 pages)
4. The Big Teal by Simon Holmes à Court (NF in November, 86 pages)
5. The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King (399 pages, an art book, I’ve been reading and savouring it for ages).
6. The Watcher on the Cast-iron Balcony by Hal Porter (AusReadingMonth, 255 pages)
7. Confusion by Stefan Zweig (Novellas in November, 143 pages, my handbag book)
8. I won’t name this last one because I abandoned it. I like to think that I am open to all kinds of reading, but I don’t want to endure a book.

Author: Robbie Arnott
Title: Limberlost
Publisher: Text Publishing, 2022
Cover art & design by W H Chong
ISBN: 9781922458766, pbk., 226 pages
Source: personal library, purchased from Benn’s Books Bentleigh

Image credit: huon pile rowboat for sale, https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/gardenvale/tinnies-dinghies/wooden-row-boat-high-detail-finish/1253277361