Book Reflections – Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko

Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko starts with Kerry Salter riding on a stolen Harley Davidson to her childhood home in northern NSW. She is loathed to return, partly to avoid her abusive brother, but also because it’s so depressing in their impoverished shack, however she dutifully returns to see her grandfather before he dies.

Kerry reverts into childhood patterns around her family but she cloaks herself in anger and defiance. Kerry’s parents are Aboriginal, and she and her siblings have grown up in a state of entrenched disadvantage. Her mother has been sober for about 5 years, after spending Kerry’s childhood in a drunken state. Kerry’s brother, Ken, lives with their mum and is a violent drunk. Their poverty, and resultant frequent inability for him to buy booze determines the balance in the household. His son has anorexia and spends most of his time avoiding Ken’s wrath by hiding in his room, gaming. Kerry’s sister, Donna, went missing 15 years ago and their mother continues to hold a flame of hope that Donna is alive. Kerry meets, and falls for, a man she went to high school with, and he is the first white person she’s ever dated. Their love affair is a delightful aspect of the novel, and they have some hot sex.

Kerry’s great grandmother escaped pursuit and capture by soldiers, while heavily pregnant, by swimming across the river and setting up camp on an island. The river is tidal and a bull shark swims upstream as far as that island. The family reveres that site and it is protected as state forest. They are devastated and shocked when the local mayor wins development approval to build a prison on the site. They band together to fight the development. As the novel progresses, the drama increases, until it reaches shocking heights.

Lucashenko constantly surprised me with the anger, racism, violence and impacts of intergenerational trauma. I almost gave up in the first 5 pages, when faced with the horror of unmitigated brutality. In the final sixth of the book my stomach churned again, but I’m glad I persisted.

It’s interesting to read an account, written by an Aboriginal woman, of an Aboriginal family in modern times. Lucashenko gives insights into how disadvantage becomes entrenched and doesn’t lift. This is an excellent account of trauma, how it continuously effects people, and how they behave because of the trauma. Everything is here: alcoholism, child sexual abuse, incarceration, drug use, family and domestic violence, Indigenous over-representation in out-of-home care and the juvenile justice system, as well as poverty, crime, neglect, unemployment…

Lucashenko is skilled at challenging stereotypes by getting one character to voice a commonly held view, then getting another to smash that opinion down. She’s also skilled at showing the minutiae of disadvantage amidst the big themes.

There’s a lot to admire about this novel and Lucashenko’s skill as a writer. It’s not all big issues and anger, there’s plenty of pleasure for the reader too.