Bingo: Violence; Passport: Bush noir
Denizen is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. I bought it thinking I was getting another “bush noir” – an Australian crime subgenre focussed on rural murders. What I actually got was a lot more interesting, but also much more confronting. I think my Kindle skipped over the warning at the front that “this book depicts mental ill health and self harm” as its dark turn took me by surprise.
The narrative has a familiar crime shape. A young man, Parker, becomes a father and sees his “past unfurling like a roll of carpet, disappearing into a vast and hypnotic blackness”. Fragments of memory make him sick with fear. James McKenzie Watson is a master of foreshadowing, creating a sense of menace right from the start, which is immediately heightened with emotionally loaded flashbacks from Parker’s childhood. As adult Parker heads back home, memories and contemporary events collide.
Parker is a beautifully written character, his internal reality always clear to the reader, even when its alignment with the outside world becomes refracted. I felt for this odd boy, teen and man as his family’s lack of emotional resources and his small town’s lack of material resources set him on a path to terrible events.
As in many novels, Mackenzie Watson puts his central message in the mouth of a character, in this case a teacher who meets up with adult Parker in a cafe. To paraphrase, rural Australia is a bleak place in constant argument with itself. Its inhabitants are in love with how harsh and dangerous the environment is, but their pride in their toughness shuts down any complaint. Generations of families tough it out in misery and destitution, handing trauma down their line, medicated only with drink and drugs. If Parker had grown up somewhere else, he might have got the help he needed.
This is an excellent book, but don’t skip the warning.
