Too Much Lip

Kerry Salter is a Murri woman who returns to her family's land on the banks of the Clarence River in Queensland — the land her family has occupied for generations and that a developer now wants to turn into a prison. Lucashenko writes with a dark comedy that is entirely Aboriginal — the family's dysfunction, their love for each other, their relationship with the river, the specific humor that survives dispossession. Won the Miles Franklin Award. The funniest and angriest Australian novel on this shelf and the one that most completely refuses the poverty narrative that white Australia imposes on Aboriginal stories.