Fiction

The Salt Madonna by Catherine Noske

Item: The Salt Madonna
Author: Felicity Plunkett

by Felicity Plunkett •

March 2020, no. 419

Picador, $32.99 pb, 368 pp

Fiction

The Salt Madonna by Catherine Noske

by Felicity Plunkett •

March 2020, no. 419

From the mainland, the fictional Chesil Island appears to float on the horizon. Perched above its bay, a statue of the Virgin Mary spreads its arms, its robes ‘faded and splintered by salt’. This icon of the miraculous and maternal, crafted from trees and symbolic of the invasion and settlement of Indigenous land, is imposing and worn, revered and neglected.

The sometimes-narrator of Catherine Noske’s potent début novel is Hannah Mulvey, who was raised on the island but left to finish school on the mainland. Her narrative is like the salt-worn Madonna’s presence. Like the statue, it is a faded, uncertain imposition.

Felicity Plunkett

Felicity Plunkett is a poet and critic. Her latest work, A Kinder Sea, is published by UQP. Her first collection of poetry Vanishing Point (UQP, 2009) won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize and was shortlisted for several other awards. She has a chapbook Seastrands (2011) in Vagabond Press’ Rare Objects series. Felicity was Poetry Editor for University of Queensland Press and edited Thirty Australian Poets (UQP, 2011). She has a PhD from the University of Sydney and her reviews and essays have been widely published in The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Book Review, Sydney Review of Books etc. Her essay ‘Sound Bridge’, a portrait of Indigenous Australian musician Dr G. Yunupingu, was first published in Australian Book Review and anthologised in Best Australian Essays 2015 (Black Inc, ed. Geordie Williamson).