The Sinkings belongs in the historical fiction basket, one of my favourite sorts of stories in which “it could have been like this” – where bare facts, so far as they are known, are imbued with the rich texture of living characters making their way through the hard stuff of real life, far more lively than ’facts’ can ever be.
This particular piece of historical fiction makes for a masterful, wonderful novel. Amanda Curtin depicts the grimmest of circumstances, but through all the grimy and bruised laminate of the hard lives of Little Jock in The Sinkings or Fish Meggie in Elemental, she somehow manages to let the light through so that what might be bleak is luminous with wisdom and richness and a sort of grounded joy. Her writing is gorgeous, enchanting, transporting, seductive; I found it difficult to put this book down (so I didn’t).
In The Sinkings two stories from different times interweave and mirror each other – that of Little Jock, an Irish intersex person (we still do not have an acceptable non-gendered pronoun), a lost child surviving the Irish famine, scratching along in the slums of Glasgow until one prison sentence too many sees him sent to the West Australian colony in the late 1800’s where his life comes to baffling and brutal end at The Sinkings; and the story of Willa in the present time, researching Little Jock for complicated reasons of her own. Willa is a guilt-wracked and grieving mother who’s own child is lost to her because of impossible choices made early on, with terrible ramifications.
The two worlds are mirrored in a beautifully rendered examination of identity, family, choice, belonging (and not), that which we inherit and what we make of the life we land in. Little Jock and Willa both come to understand something of the complexities of becoming who we are – each ends up with a name chosen to be different to that they were given, each has to reckon with the lot of the outsider and find their ‘voice’, their way of being, a liveable life, some sort of love. Willa’s introspective examination of her own motives in dealing with her child help us understand the mystery of Jock’s savage death, or how it might have happened and within that, how decisions do and do not get made and the long runnels of consequence that shape life thereafter. Both Willa and Jock are ordinary, and in their ways, heroic. Each comes a long way, literally and metaphorically, out of the margins of life to find something worth having – until it is taken from them and something else is found.
This is an intelligent, immensely satisfying book of wide and deep sweep; if you hadn’t picked it up yet, I loved it – 5 stars! Now, I’m going to further immerse myself in this wonderful author’s work by reading Inherited!
Pingback: Australian Women Writers Challenge—2014 wrap-up | looking up/looking down
Pingback: Interview with ‘Elemental’ author Amanda Curtin | Australian Women Writers Challenge
Pingback: January 2014 Wrap Up: Historical Fiction | Australian Women Writers Challenge
January 20, 2014 at 2:28 am
Thanks for this review, Karen. As a huge fan of Elemental by Amanda Curtin, I look forward to The Sinkings with its intriguing plot.
LikeLike
January 20, 2014 at 2:35 am
Hi Angela – I read Elemental first, and like you, raved about it to all and sundry because it’s that good. I picked up The Sinkings hoping it would be as good (second books can be so disappointing), and to my great joy, it is! Therefore, Amanda Curtin is a UTF (Up There Fave) for me. You might like another of my UTF authors who writes in a similar vein; Susan Fletcher who wrote Witchlight (or Corrag). Unfortunately not Australian, so not for AWW, but also fabulous.
LikeLike
January 7, 2014 at 10:22 am
Hi Karen. Thank you for this beautifully written review. It’s such a pleasure to know The Sinkings is still finding readers. 🙂
LikeLike
January 16, 2014 at 12:34 am
You need to make sure Crow Books has more copies then, Amanda! 🙂
LikeLike
January 16, 2014 at 1:33 am
And New Editions 🙂
LikeLike
January 7, 2014 at 7:45 am
Oh, what a fabulous review, Karen. So much so, I want to read it again! You’ve highlighted all the gorgeous detail that makes this so rich. Love it!
LikeLike
January 7, 2014 at 9:52 am
Thank you! my first ever review, so that’s pretty encouraging!
LikeLike
January 6, 2014 at 11:03 pm
Great review, Karen.
LikeLike
January 7, 2014 at 12:18 am
thank you Michael B X
LikeLike
January 6, 2014 at 3:13 pm
oh, it’s every bit as good Kathleen. I reckon you’ll love this one too!
LikeLike
January 6, 2014 at 12:26 pm
Hey, Karen, this review is perfectly timed for me, having read Elemental and loved it. So I’m ready for more of Amanda’s writings and, as a result of your review, just rung Crow Books in East Vic Park and reserved their LAST copy of it to be picked up tomorrow. Thank you! 😀
LikeLike