Carpentaria

By: Alexis Wright

Narrated by: Isaac Drandich

Carpentaria is Alexis Wright's second novel, an epic set in the Gulf country of north-western Queensland, Australia. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, farce and politics. The novel teems with extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the moth-ridden Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, the queen of the rubbish-dump Angel Day and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stride like giants across this storm-swept world.

Winner of the 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award.

©2008 Alexis Wright (P)2008 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd.

Critic reviews

"Wright breaks all the rules of grammar and syntax to sweep us along on a great torrent of language that thrills and amazes with its inventiveness and humour and with the sheer power of its storytelling. It's brutal and confronting and it's sad and funny at the same time. Like the Gulf Country itself, this is big enough to lose yourself in." ( Sydney Morning Herald).
"A swelling, heaving tsunami of a novel: stinging, sinuous, salted with outrageous humour, sweetened by spiralling lyricism and swaggering with the confident promise of a tale dominated by risk, roguery and revelation." ( The Australian)

Phenomenal work!

A fabulous tale, set in the small town of Desperance, on the Gulf of Carpentaria (northwest Queensland), which makes good use of Indigenous people’s perspectives and everyday conversations—in English—as they navigate life and events in and around the white/mixed settlement there. Complicating the situation is an international mining operation that seeks to exploit the region’s resources. The “plot” in Carpentaria is less the story than are the key characters and unpredictable happenings and personal interactions that make it up. The writing, too, I would say, is an intimate part of the story—not in terms of "how the tale got written" (as with some modern stories that dwell on that) but rather how it is BEING TOLD, by Wright. This is a brilliant one-off thing, like James Joyce’s Ulysses, or William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, where the tale can’t be separated from the telling. And, yes, to my mind, this is Nobel-level writing: most every sentence is an artistic expression of the first order! The characters live and breath as individual persons in this world (at least in the particular moment in which they exist), and yet they are buffeted by social and natural forces beyond their control. Nature, too—the sea, the sky, the land, the weather, the bloody spinifex grass—is a major “character” in the work, as are local history and “the dreaming.” Everything comes together and makes brilliant sense. It’s a phenomenal novel by an outstanding writer!
And the reading, by the way, by Isaac Drandic, an experienced theatrical director, is more than up to the task. In fact, the Audible version adds a whole new dimension to the written novel. Drandic expertly moves from character to character, from moment to moment, conveying in perfectly dramatized form the “feeling” of events and dialogue, tapping into the roots of local knowledge, local emotion, and making it all live in the recording as it might not even do on the page (especially for non-Australians). A consummate performance!

Mumbling narrator

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I couldn't continue listening so I am going to buy the book. The story is important and well written but the narrator ruined it for me.

Would you be willing to try another one of Isaac Drandich’s performances?

Never!

Great performance

Not enough plot for my taste. Once the drowned fisherman shows up, it is too slow.

disappointing

Whimsical with little or no direction...little substance but good narrator who tries to maake sense out of nonsense...couldn't finish it