Andrew McGahan (1966–2019)

A beautiful, timeless, gothic cathedral of a novel. Andrew McGahan, who passed away tragically young this year (2019), remains an underrated Australian novelist. While he is better known for his sardonic novellas capturing Queensland so well and - to younger readers - for his YA fiction, this is McGahan's great work.

Set during the Keating era and the passing of Native Title legislation (with flashbacks to the long dry years of the Menzies era), The White Earth is a story of our country's show more history, of a brewing war over that same history (a war that, in the 15 years since the novel was published, has erupted), and of the lies we tell to replace an unpalatable truth.

However, far from being didactic, McGahan grounds his examination in young William's discovery of his new world, Kunal Station, the farm where he and his recently-widowed mother have been taken in. The farm teems with gothic experiences and strange characters navigating their own paths. Importantly, the author also allows all of his characters to speak their truths, questioning that strange feeling (which I know only too well, as the descendant of a white family 200 years on this soil) of being the possessor of a stolen land while also having a genuine longstanding connection to the land oneself.

It is a novel of questions rather than answers, an earnest look at the challenges of land ownership, of Native Title, of family, and of history itself. show less

Loved this book and days later, I'm still thinking about it. It eludes genre-classification and all I can compare it to is Stephen King's works - a thriller that is real and realistic in all but one little aspect which changes everything. If someone were to describe the plot to me, I would have brushed it aside as not my thing and would never have read it. So I urge you to give this one a go even if the blurb sounds kind of weird to you. An interesting point is that this book has a lot show more masculine features - the rugged setting, the ambitious ruthless billionaire, the dangerous mountaineering... yet the main character is a woman who is rather sensitive (don't worry there is no mushy gushy stuff here). The contrast works really well - it balances the story but also adds to the feeling of disturbance. Highly recommend. show less

I loved this book. The plot was bizarre and totally fantastical and if it wasn't so beautifully written I would not have been the least bit interested. The writing just swept me along and I found myself picking it up to read a few lines at every chance I got.

It left me wondering about perceptions people have of themselves and their own sanity. Andrew McGahan made these characters come to life without giving them a name, one of which is comatose and the other a "retarded" orphan who does not show more communicate.

I am now a Andrew McGahan fan and have two more of his books to read. show less

It has been some time since I started and finished a book in one sitting. Yesterday was the perfect day for reading — the weather was pleasant enough for me to sit on the balcony, feet up, with a bottle of wine at hand and just read.

Andrew McGahan is onemy favourite Australian authors. He doesn’t confine himself to one genre (so far he has tackled grunge, crime and the Gothic family saga), he doesn’t waste words and he’s just so damned readable it hurts (my ego, amongst other show more things).

It doesn’t hurt, either, that he writes about what is familiar — locations, people, local politics, Australia. One of the reasons that I read fiction is to experience other worlds and new ideas or to just catch a glimpse of someone else’s imagination. Sometimes it is comforting to just be able to ’see’ what an author is describing. Rather than taking myself out of the experience in order to picture a character or a location, I can simply go with the flow of the writing.

Comforting familiarity is not something McGahan’s latest book, Underground, offers.

I recognise many of the locations — and have even lived in some of them — and even most of the broadly drawn characters but the familiarity in this case is disquieting. Underground is set in a dystopian (near) future Australia: Canberra has been obliterated by a nuclear blast (no great loss, really); a permanent state of emergency has been declared; people are disappearing mysteriously; citizenship verification tests and security checkpoints are the norm; and 'cultural precincts' have been established for the housing of suspect minorities. Although extreme, unfortunately this is an Australia that can easily be imagined.

In Underground, McGahan has imagined a worst case scenario, using real incidents (the 2003 vist to Canberra by President Bush, riots at the Woomera detention facility) as the basis of this future Australia. He has leavened the harshness of his vision with healthy doses of satire but, even in the laugh out loud moments, there is the unnerving feeling that this future is one possible outcome of Australia’s part in the war on terror.

I’m one of the converted and possibly not in the audience McGahan wants to attract with Underground. I’m already concerned about the direction the world is taking and not in need of conversion. I wasn’t looking for subtlety; I was looking for a read that would address the concerns so many of us have and that would engross me while doing it. I found it. There is no nuanced analysis of Australian government policy, either national or foreign, nor the direction it is taking Australia. McGahan has a point to make and he’s knowingly not subtle in making it:

True, normally I’d be wary of being so overtly political with a novel. But this no longer seems the time to be polite or indirect in fiction, or to be artfully diffident. It’s time to confront the danger of what’s going on here, head on.

This is a book I will readily reread and will recommend wholeheartedly for the commentary on the state of a world in which the worst-case scenario presented by McGahan is even a possibility. show less