A tough guy discovers the past
The Age
Saturday September 5, 2009
Bloke By Bruce Pascoe Viking, $32.95BRUCE Pascoe's 12th novel gives us drug smugglers in a Gippsland town, an interlude in South America and another in an Australian jail, and a part-indigenous hero rediscovering his heritage.Some of the joinery and pacing is a bit wonky. One example: Jim Bloke, Pascoe's orphaned, ex-prisoner hero, learns a whole chapter-full of the town's secret history very quickly after turning up there, without Pascoe doing much to dramatise the process of discovery. I never quite found myself completely believing in the voice he gives Bloke: he is a tough guy, and Pascoe is careful to make him a well-read tough guy (all those days alone in his cell) but he also has a political consciousness and a verbal flair that can sometimes seem a bit too literary, and a bit overborne by the points Pascoe wants to make.Coming off best are the black characters, such as Nectar and Smearcat, whom Bloke meets up with in jail. Nectar is a Maori and a bit player in Kiwi TV, which, as Bloke mordantly explains, always has a need for someone who can convincingly play a violent Maori man. Say "I'm an actor" in a broad Kiwi accent to hear where he got his nickname.The most compelling sequences in the book are when things have gone pear-shaped and Bloke has gone to ground with his indigenous relatives, among them the fierce Aunty Cookup who takes pity from no one.
© 2009 The Age
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