Meme McDonald (1954–2017)

A wise and sensitive story about young people searching for their places in the world and falling in love, a love complicated by their racial difference.

Love is Like Water is a love story and much more. The book’s cover plays up the fact that it is about love between a black man and a white woman, but love is only part of the larger story of individuals searching for self-knowledge and self-acceptance. The author uses the couple’s complicated relationship as a way of writing about what show more it means for a woman off a Queensland ranch to be alone in the world and for an Indigenous man to be proud of his heritage but scared by the pain that he and those he loves have suffered. The result is a beautifully told story with important resonances in our world.

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I found this novel very difficult to read at first because it is written using aboriginal words and rhythm of speaking. For example "jalbu" is a word for wife or girlfriend. This is the story of a young man who travels north to attend a funeral and after the funeral, there is a big celebration and his cousin gets drunk and he has to go and rescue her in the dark, despite getting attention from a very attractive local young lady. The Binna Binna man is the bogey man that he has to watch out for.

I loved this book because it id hilarious, exciting and adventurous. There was even some sadness.

(Reviewing from months' old memory) Sequel to My Girragundji, slightly more sober about social issues (not that the first wasn't about them too) and for slightly older readers. The scene of the car stuck on the hill, and the scene at the beach, particularly stick in my memory.