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Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Abstract

Kim Scott's Taboo is a story about beginnings and endings.This novel reminds the reader of the circularity of stories, and how those stories are shaped by intent and weighed by landscape. Scott speaks of dispossession, abuse, colonialism, addiction and racism in lyrical and melancholy prose. The men and women who walk through these pages are startlingly aware of their failings and equally forgiving of those failings in others. There are no quick fixes and the story vacillates between despair and hope. Yet this is not a grim story. The lucidity of its prose lifts it beyond the despair in its pages and reminds us that there are no perfect words and no easy resolutions to the trials of our First Nations people. An important and devastating story for our times.

Author Biography

Rashida Murphy is the author of The Historian's Daughter (UWA Publishing, 2016). This novel was shortlisted in the Dundee International Book Prize in 2015, and won ECU's Magdalena Award for Excellence in Feminist Writing. Rashida is an Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Arts and Humanities at ECU. Her essays, reviews and short stories have appeared in various national and international journals. She is currently working on her second novel.

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