I read this rather extraordinary novel earlier this year (as part of my #20BooksOfSummer challenge), but never got around to reviewing it mainly because I couldn’t find the words to do it justice. It’s a multi-layered, multi-generational story that revolves around grief, loss and dispossession, but teases out, gently but oh-so surely, what it is to be Aboriginal, to have a sense of identity, a true purpose and a language of one’s own.
But back on country, August discovers there are bigger challenges ahead: her grandparents’ house is about to be repossessed by a mining company. Poppy was midway through writing a dictionary of his people’s language, but his work has gone missing and August is intent on finding it so that she can finish the task at hand. It tells the story of August, a young Aboriginal woman, who returns home - after a decade living in London - to help bury her beloved grandfather, Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi. It has been shortlisted for numerous others, including the Stella Prize and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. The Yield won this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award, arguably this country’s greatest literary prize, as well as the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
If you live in Australia, you would probably have to be living under a rock not to know this novel by Wiradjuri author Tara June Winch. Fiction – paperback Hamish Hamilton 344 pages 2019.
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