Graham Akhurst, Borderland, University of WA Publishing, West Australia, October 2023, 236 pp., RRP $22.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760802646
This is Graham Akhurst’s first YA novel. He comes to it with strong credentials that include a Fulbright Scholarship, a Masters degree in Creative Writing and a current academic post in Creative Writing at the University of Technology Sydney. Narrated in the first person, the novel takes up the viewpoint of Jono, an Aboriginal teenager who has just graduated from a private high school (indigenous scholarship), and is now attending acting classes with his best friend, Jenny, also Aboriginal. He knows he is in love with her and wants the friendship to become something else between them, though Jenny fears a love affair would spoil the deep and necessary friendship they share.
Jono seems to be suffering from an anxiety disorder, which might, however, be glimpses of a totemic Dreaming world he is about to encounter. Is he going mad, or is he in contact with an important truth about himself? Jono and Jenny find themselves on a film crew generously sponsored by a mining company. They are given the task of going out onto Country at important ceremonial and archaeological sites where Jono must explain, for the camera, the good intentions of the mining company and benign effects a mining lease would have on this remote land.
Jono’s visitations become more threatening and horrific. The local river catches alight with escaped gases due to mining explorations, and local aboriginal people recognise something in Jono that might save them if he isn’t destroyed by the visions of another reality populated by beings of the Dreaming. Meanwhile, Jenny must face questions about her own origins, questions that could undermine an identity that is central to her being.
This is a fast-paced, complex, sometimes thrilling account of ancient cultures encountering modern business ruthlessness, young identities in transition, and a contemporary Australia itself uncertain of its fundamental identity and priorities. This novel offers a new, strong voice in indigenous fiction. I look forward to more compelling and thoughtful fiction from Graham Akhurst. Teacher notes are available from the publisher’s website.
Reviewed by Kevin Brophy
