Mullumbimby www.firstnationstelegraph.com
by Melissa Lucashenko
F
rom one of Australia’s most celebrated Indigenous voices, Melissa Lucashenko, comes her eagerly awaited new novel Mullumbimby. Told with humour and a sharp satirical eye, this is a modern story of romantic love and cultural warfare set against an ancient land. When feisty exmuso Jo Breen uses her divorce settlement to buy a neglected property in the Byron Bay hinterland, she is hoping for a tree change, and a
Clever, thoughtful, real – a powerful novel about country and belonging - Kate Grenville
blossoming connection to the land of her Aboriginal ancestors. What she discovers instead is sharp dissent from her teenage daughter, trouble brewing from unimpressed white neighbours and a looming Native Title war between the local Bundjalung families. The arrival of charismatic Twoboy Jackson in town leads to Jo unexpectedly finding love on one side of the Native Title divide.
As the vicious fight in the local Indigenous community reaches a crescendo, she quickly learns that living on country is only part of the recipe for the Good Life. Lucashenko’s first novel in over ten years, Mullumbimby was inspired by her deep love of Bundjalung country and for the diverse community living in the Byron Shire hinterland around Ocean Shores. ‘Lots of Australians know and love the beautiful far northern rivers of New South Wales. ‘This novel is about how we Goories know and love it, and the multiple ways we are finding of belonging on our ancestral Bundjalung land in the 21st century,’ says Lucashenko. With Aboriginal language sprinkled throughout, Mullumbimby is a darkly funny novel about the meaning of real belonging from a master storyteller.
Mullumbimby is a modern tale of the clash between cultures, of the importance of belonging, and, surprisingly, of the pitfalls of making assumptions about other people and their background. It deserves the widest readership - Bookseller & Publisher
Melissa Lucashenko is an Australian writer of European and Goorie heritage. She received an honours degree in public policy from Griffith University in 1990. In 1997, she published her first novel Steam Pigs. It won the Dobbie Literary Award for Australian women’s fiction and was shortlisted for both the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award and the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Steam Pigs was followed by the Aurora Prize–winning Killing Darcy, a novel for teenagers, and Hard Yards, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Courier-Mail Book of the Year and the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award. Too Flash, a teenage novel about class and friendship, was released in 2002. Melissa lives between Brisbane and the Bundjalung nation. Page 1