Limberlost

De: Robbie Arnott

Narrado por: Zoe Carides

The third novel by the award-winning author of Flames and The Rain Heron, Limberlost is an extraordinary chronicle of life and land: of carnage and kindness, blood ties and love.

Ned West dreams of sailing across the river on a boat of his very own. To Ned, a boat means freedom – the fresh open water, squid-rich reefs, fires on private beaches – a far cry from life on Limberlost, the family farm, where his father worries and grieves for Ned's older brothers. They're away fighting in a ruthless and distant war, becoming men on the battlefield, while Ned – too young to enlist – roams the land in search of rabbits to shoot, selling their pelts to fund his secret boat ambitions.

But as the seasons pass and Ned grows up, real life gets in the way. Ned falls for Callie, the tough, capable sister of his best friend, and together they learn the lessons of love, loss, and hardship. When a storm decimates the Limberlost crop and shakes the orchard's future, Ned must decide what to protect: his childhood dreams, or the people and the land that surround him…

At turns tender and vicious, Limberlost is a tale of the masculinities we inherit, the limits of ownership and understanding, and the teeming, vibrant wonders of growing up. In the folkloric spirit of Max Porter's Lanny, Julia Armfield's Salt Slow and Paul Kingsnorth's Beast, this is an unforgettable love letter to the richness of the natural world from a writer of rare, spellbinding talent.

‘A strange and joyous marvel.' RICHARD FLANAGAN on Flames

‘Arnott's eco-fable, set in a politically broken near future, explores the constant push-pull that exists between our capacity for enchantment and our need to exploit what we find…It's sad and satisfying.' THE TIMES on The Rain Heron

©2022 Robbie Arnott (P)2022 Wavesound from W. F. Howes Ltd

Conflicted 😐

A beautiful coming of age story that lacked any real connection between myself and the characters. When the author writes about the land, you get a rich painting of Limberlost and life as a boy growing up on a farm, hunting and dreaming of buying a boat.

His characters, men and women, are all strong silent types whose faces seem to go blank at every interaction. You are left to decipher what they are thinking and there isn’t a lot of interesting dialogue. It’s still a nicely written book, easy listen, maybe a wee bit too flowery in prose (“the perfume of the boat”) but just fell short for me in character development.

Wonderful story

Beautiful story. Evocative, powerful, lyrical, moving. Descriptions of the land capture its beauty and ferocity.

beautiful

This book is so beautifully written and narrated. highly recommend. I look forward to more Robbie Arnott books.

Powerful coming of age story

Great audio. on the short list for the Miles Franklin prize 2023. Narrated beautifully by Zoe Carides
A coming of age story with magnificent nature descriptions, wild animals, rabbits and Men messing around in boats in Tasmania.

This is my third Arnott book. This Australian fiction writer who writes about the nature of this wild land is a favorite. I find his work magical and this is no exception.

It begins with rumors of a whale gone mad at the mouth of a river, destroying fishing boats, making high pitched ancient sounds and its fluke seen breaking the water repeatedly. This whale both begins and ends this coming of age story.

The novel has two timelines, the first, Ned, a 17 year old boy, working long summer days, trying to find ways to earn enough money to buy a small boat. Alone on his family's farm with only his father and sister for company as his two older brothers are away fighting in the last days of the World War II in the Pacific. The second timeline is the same man now grown with a farm and children of his own recalling this summer of his youth and how instrumental it was in shaping who he has become.

"He suddenly felt very old. Felt the distance between his youth and what he was now. He flexed his wrists, touched his face, wondered if the troubled boy of that summer would recognize the man he'd become.

The story centers around the buying of that boat he worked so hard for and the trapping and then the healing of a Quoll, a type of wild cat of the forests close to the family ranch. Small events play big roles in this story and there is a wild beauty in both the telling and the words. The life here is not an easy one and it has a truth in the telling that I found hard to put down. As Ned goes back over events he begins to wonder if he is remembering the details and wether they are that important.

"He realized his recollections might not be as clear as he'd assumed. It was a horrible sensation, feeling that the facts of his life had blurred. He wondered if his past was slipping away?"

A wonderful read. The writing gave me a chance to picture and explore a part of the world I have not seen and to experience how a boy grows into a man and reflects on events that played an important part. Really so good it is hard for me to describe. A simple story with great power.