Review of The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally

Abstract

In part, this is a tale of culture conflict. As such, it should fall on receptive ears, with the work of people like McCarthy, Mulvaney,the Berndts, the Abbies, Trezise, Rowley and Reynolds just seeping through to the Australian public. But despite Keneally's far more than trivial insight into both our own society and the one we destroyed, his novel is not primarily of either of these, but of their synthesis: feral man. Denied blackness and whiteness, Jimmie's solutions to problems from either side must be unique: and fascinatingly atrocious.