Beyond Selidor

yay! I apologise that my reading habits are super haphazard, but I don't mind if you unsubscribe at any time etc! and I agree, it's really fun to have the same niche things in the background, because then it's EXTRA fun to think about how that shapes later reading preferences. I don't think we were assigned Taronga, but I definitely read it in primary school (... i did have a convo recently with a friend questioning the range of disturbing/strange novels that were just floating around a primary school library!?), and I remember being SO uncomfortable and unsettled by it - and being really enthralled by that reading experience. When I think about my fondness for oblique, uncomfortable and ominous narratives now, I wonder if that book imprinted on something important, lol.

I haven't actually read anything else by him, but I was so surprised by how well it stood up (especially on a basic fine-grained prose level - this tends to be a thing i find frustrating when revisiting YAlit) that now I'm considering looking at his other work. The falling in love with assigned readings is very relatable though LMAO i feel like a survey of most dw users would return a similar result :D.

RE: the book itself, I wanted to re-read mostly for the animal telepathy and the animosity between the main character and the tiger, which WAS just as intense and weird as I remember it being, but what I really took away this time was How Does This Book Fit Into Discourses of Colonialism And Orientalism.... I'm also partway through Said's Orientalism, so I'm sure that's why it's at the forefront of my mind, but finding out that Kelleher also grew up in Africa really compounds the feeling that he was grappling with some significant questions re: what it means to Relate to Otherness on stolen land. I don't know how deliberate that was or how successfully it works but it's pretty wild to think that a) he wrote it in the 80s and b) i read it as a little kid and just got to absorb all of that complexity. MUCH TO CONSIDER.