Robbie Arnott

Readers familiar with Robbie Arnott’s fiction will have some expectations about the kind of book the author is likely to conjure. Dusk sits comfortably inside the thematic and narrative territories he has previously explored, particularly in The Rain Heron (2020) and the wonderful Limberlost (2022). Dusk features Arnott’s typically vivid descriptive prose and his concern with the natural world and our place within it. Dusk generates pathos with delicate expertise and mixes genres while retaining a strong semblance of realism.

Limberlost opens with an image of nature as dangerous: a whale, reportedly driven mad or feral by a harpoon in its side, is alleged to be destroying fishing boats in a vengeful spree. Ned is five, and the whale stories haunt him so much that his father takes him out to see for himself. The frightened child waits in a small boat for the animal’s power to show itself.

In an unnamed land under the thrall of a mysterious coup, mountain-dweller Ren wants only to live off the grid, undisturbed by human contact. Ren’s familiarity with the natural world becomes a liability when a band of soldiers comes seeking information that only she can provide: the whereabouts of a fabled bird with the ability to make it rain.

Robbie Arnott’s Flames is an exuberantly creative and confident début. Set in an alternate Tasmania, Flames’s kaleidoscopic narrative crackles with energy and imagination. This is a world of briefly reincarnating women, gin-swigging private detectives, wombat farms, malevolent cormorants, elementals and nature gods ...