Melissa Lucashenko

"For the straight world, crime was a problem or an abstraction, but for people like her, crime was the solution. Not that she called it crime: she called it reparations."

Grimly funny and vividly captured, Too Much Lip is also violent, hostile, filthy, and generally unpleasant - and Melissa Lucashenko's ability to portray all of these is what makes the novel so good.

Kerry, a thirtysomething from the city, returns to her family's small town with a backpack of questionably-earned money, show more bittersweet memories of an ex-girlfriend now behind bars, and outstanding warrants for possession and assaulting police. She's here for the funeral of her grandfather, and finds herself dragged back into the lives of her extended family. And, boy, are they a mess. Her mum's a moderately-functioning alcoholic, her nephew's an anorexic socially-isolated gamer, one of her brothers is navigating the family welfare system as he raises two troubled foster kids while her other brother is, well, a dangerous wreck. Tensions simmer - tension with each other, with their collective history, with the town around them, with their place in the broader country - and there's a constant sense of loss, felt most palpably through Kerry's older sister, missing for almost twenty years. And, on top of all of this, developers in league with the town's possibly corrupt mayor are planning to build on the Aboriginal ancestral lands of Kerry's people.

I would say things have been better for them, but the reality is they probably haven't been.

This novel is quintessentially Australian, although it's an Australia with which I have no familiarity. Every page rang true even as I turned away in horror at the idea that anyone could live like this. Lucashenko makes generous use of Australian working-class vernacular ("You chuck the snooze button on then. But I'll be back dreckly to haul ya skinny black mooya over there") as well as Indigenous terms local to her people, creating a vibrant spirit-of-place to which the reader must adapt as they go. She captures the heady mix of emotions that inform Kerry's life: freedom from having rejected much of the (heteronormative, Anglo) culture around her yet daily fear from living on the run and being a black woman in a world that often resents that fact. In lesser hands, this kind of "vernacular novel" can be easily tiring -indeed, for the first 10 pages, I thought it might be the case. This is very much "not my kind of book". And then Lucashenko's prose just took me in its grasp and refused to let go.

In many ways, Too Much Lip is a novel about violence. The author notes in the afterword that every act of violence in the book has an historical source, most from her own family, and the role of violence in the everyday lives of people - particularly Indigenous people - looms large. It's a truly shocking feeling, only about 15 pages into the novel, when Kerry is reunited with her brother Ken. He's her brother, and he lives with her mum, but she finds herself wondering how much he's had to drink and how honest she can be with him before he would start hitting her. Despite some shocking acts against one another, this family treats them as everyday occurrences. Frustrating, true, but mundane. And Lucashenko lets no-one off lightly. The violence is partly the fault of the individual: characters in the novel squabble over why children who face the same traumas can turn out so different. The violence is partly cultural: their Indigenous heritage is heavily gendered, too keen to let men off the hook for "being men", and too willing to forgive horrific crimes while rejecting those who try to expose such. But, of course, much of the violence is intergenerational and related to colonialism. The oppressive experience that the Salters face of being intensely policed - both literally and figuratively - for acts that would earn white people a reprimand, if that. I can't completely understand this experience, of course, but I imagine it feels like running a race only to realise that everyone else is sprinting ahead while your lane contains potholes, dangerous animals, and the occasional brick wall.

The remarkable thing, though, is that the book never once feels didactic. Much of what I have mentioned above is only glanced at, or discussed during late-night drinking sessions. Lucashenko doesn't need to preach because the facts of life speak for themselves. And her control over the proceedings is supreme. A clever twist halfway through the novel upends Kerry's view of the world, and the revelations that follow - which should be melodramatic or even a bit ridiculous - feel earnest and natural every step of the way.

If I were to quibble, one might argue that the good white guy and the bad white guy in the story are both one-dimensional, but I suspect that's part of the point. Lucashenko is turning the tables on the one-dimensional "token" black characters who have populated Australian stories over the past century - and, anyhow, I know a few Buckleys and a few Steves, so perhaps it's not weird after all. Perhaps I would have appreciated a glossary of Indigenous terms. Fair enough, the author is asking us to inhabit her space, and she doesn't - nor should she - feel compelled to write a book on white people's terms. Still, though, while I think white people like myself need to enter a lot more of these spaces on their terms, it wouldn't hurt to open the door a little wider in some circumstances.

I think any Australian should give this one a go (non-Australians might actually find this impenetrable, being so vernacular-based) and be prepared to leave one's preconceptions at the door. This novel will make you feel angry, perhaps guilty, perhaps personally attacked. But it's worth it. show less

Read for our f2f bookclub gathering this month, TOO MUCH LIP was a perfect book for a club like ours - triggering much discussion. For this reader, starting with that line in the blurb:

"The avalanche of bullshit in the world would drown her if she let it; the least she could do was raise her voice in anger."

... it was a really enjoyable reading experience, providing insight, connection, recognition and an opportunity to learn. Delivered with touches of dark and light humour that frequently show more had me roaring with laughter, and moments that left me breathless with awareness of past cruelties, of lack of understanding and too many things we have been so unwilling to acknowledge or accept for such a long time, and how much we have missed out on because of that.

TOO MUCH LIP is the story of wise-cracking, externally tough as nails, Kerry Salter and her return to the family fold as her Pop lies dying. It's about old family wounds, next generation struggles, and a sense of place that's enviable in the way it wraps identity and belief systems into absolute connection with place, the past and the future. It's about love in unexpected places, acceptance within fractious and complicated families and inter-generational trauma, the amount of damage that colonisation has left in its wake, and the little battles that everybody has on a day to day basis just trying to keep one foot in front of the other.

Told in perfect voices, Kerry and her family are people who are so real you look for them in the room as you're reading about them. It's about a place which is so beautifully depicted you not only see, but feel it. It's a story of survival and pride that made me admire these people so much, with their reality and spirituality, their connection to place, and the creatures that surround them, their ways of looking back for guidance on how to move forward, and their painful but unshrinking confrontation of past abuse.

Somebody told me years ago that you shouldn't finish a review with a declaration of recommendation, that the review itself should imply it, but in case there's any doubt whatsoever TOO MUCH LIP cannot be recommended highly, strongly, persistently enough. On my Australian's mandatory reading list, it's right up towards the very top.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/too-much-lip-melissa-lucashenko show less

Mullumbimby is an award winning contemporary fiction by Australian Indigenous author Melissa Lushenko. Like the main character in the book Melissa has Bundjalung heritage and lived on a property in this area.

The story is about Jo Breen who has moved with her teenage daughter to a twenty acre property in the Byron Bay hinterlands after her divorce. Her life is full of hard work but she is delighted to own a piece of her traditional country and to be living with her horses. Things get show more complicated when she meets the handsome Two Boy who is passionately pursuing a landrights claim through the tribunal, causing division and friction between the various Bundjalung family groups.

The writing is gritty, sardonic and humorous. I enjoyed Jo as a main character. She is sassy, smart and cynical. If you don’t like swearing, don’t read this book, but I loved it as it reflects the reality of how people speak. I also enjoyed the use of language as even though I am from the other side of the country there are many familiar words and expressions. This could be an uncomfortable read for dugai (whitefellas) as it doesn’t pull any punches, but in a good way that calls out bullshit and colonialism where she sees it. The audio narration by Tasma Walters was brilliant. I’d be keen to read another of Lushenko’s books. 4.5 stars for me. show less

Possibly Lucashenko at her literary best. There is strong plotting, intensely effective characterisations of people you can live and empathise with despite your own cultural blind spots (which get some enlightenment along the way). The story moves along at thriller pace, yet there is emotional depth that can leave your heart beating and your eyes moist.