Mullumbimby, by Melissa Lucashenko

Mullumbimby is Melissa Lucashenko’s fifth book but the first that I have read by this author.  She is of Russian/Ukrainian and Aboriginal Goorie heritage, identifying with the Ygambeh/Bundjalung people of the Byron Bay hinterland around Ocean Shores.  (See her author page at UQP).  Previous books have won all kinds of awards, most notably Steam Pigs (1997) which won the 1998 Dobbie Prize for Australian women’s fiction, and was shortlisted in the NSW Premier’s Awards and the regional Commonwealth Writer’s Prize.

Sue at Whispering Gums reviewed Lucashenko’s short story called ‘The Silent Majority’ the opening lines of which I now recognise almost word-for-word as the opening lines of Mullumbimby, and while liking the story very much as a meditation on stories and their importance, Sue noted that the character Jo – who’s the central character in Mullumbimby – ‘conveys … a sense of cynicism about humans, of all colours’.  That sense of cynicism is…