TAMARISK ROW by Gerald Murnane

it’s Kiara’s intense, anguished interiority rendered in lovely and poetic exposition that drives this evocation of an underclass and the disposable women just trying to survive. If the rich language occasionally tips toward impenetrable (“brushing against my skin like 7-Eleven slushies in the winter”?), so too does the hard trap Kiara can’t escape, the engineered tragedy of intersectional poverty, racism, and misogyny. The acute observations are more remarkable still considering the author is herself a promising Oakland teen.

Plot, shmot—the real story here is lush, immersive writing and a relentless reality that crushes a girl’s soul.

TAMARISK ROW

Murnane, Gerald And Other Stories (288 pp.) $18.00 paper | May 3, 2022 978-1-91150-836-6

This reissue of the Australian writer’s first novel suggests the seeds of his peculiar style as he describes a boy’s early life. Nine-year-old Clement Killeaton looks at the new 1948 calendar in his kitchen, with its picture of Jesus and his parents during their flight from Bethlehem to Egypt. Clement and his parents live in Bassett, near Melbourne, the two Australian cities that pretty much mark the extent of their travels. In this debut, first published in 1974, Murnane establishes motifs that will recur in subsequent work, including Catholicism; horse racing; the effects of different landscapes; the play of light, especially through colored glass; and the play of perception and ideas through the mind. What little plot the book has concerns the