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Taboo Paperback – 23 July 2019

by Kim Scott (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars 203
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'Taboo seizes and will not release.' Robert Macfarlane

One may as well begin, 'Once upon a time...' Except this is no fairytale.

Kim Scott's powerfully charged, award-winning novel thrusts a young woman centre-stage in a vicious drama that has been playing in her family for generations - an act of extraordinary violence, and an act of extraordinary reconciliation, separated by two hundred years.

WINNER VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS 2019
WINNER NSW PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS 2018
WINNER QUEENSLAND LITERARY AWARDS 2018
FINALIST COLIN RODERICK LITERARY AWARD 2018
FINALIST MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARD 2018
SHORTLISTED FOR PRIME MINISTER'S LITERARY AWARDS 2018
LONGLISTED FOR THE ABIA LITERARY FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018
LONGLISTED FOR THE INDIE BOOK AWARDS FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018

PRAISE FOR TABOO

'Remarkable' The Australian

'An extraordinary novel' Robert Macfarlane

'A master storyteller at the top of his game' Guardian

'One of the most thoughtful, exciting and powerful storytellers of this continent today' Sydney Review of Books

'Stunning' Saturday Paper

'Undaunted and daring as ever' Sydney Morning Herald

Previous page
  1. Print length
    304 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Picador Australia
  4. Publication date
    23 July 2019
  5. Dimensions
    12.9 x 2 x 19.9 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    1760784893
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1760784898
  8. See all details
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Product description

Review

From the two-times winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, comes a work charged with ambition and poetry, brutality and mystery about a young woman cast into a drama that has been playing for over two hundred years ...

Book Description

From the two-times winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, comes a work charged with ambition and poetry, brutality and mystery about a young woman cast into a drama that has been playing for over two hundred years ...

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador Australia (23 July 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1760784893
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1760784898
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.9 x 2 x 19.9 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 out of 5 stars 203

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Kim Scott

Kim Scott

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Top reviews from Australia

Shaz
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read.
Reviewed in Australia on 3 September 2022
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Informative, and educational for people who have no awareness of inter generational forms of violence and discrimination.
Great read.
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Kim Wingerei
4.0 out of 5 stars A brave and important book!
Reviewed in Australia on 18 April 2018
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I found it hard going at first, Scott moves between metaphors, fantasy and reality in a story told like no other. The result is that his words and sentences linger well beyond the page, the story starts with a bang, but then it changes pace and builds characters and plot with brutal tenderness. Events are in your face, others are hinted at, but the bravery is in putting it all in the perspective of both history and humanity, yet gently promoting the idea that maybe, just maybe, reconciliation is possible. Kim Scott should be front and centre of that debate!
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D. Hawthorne
3.0 out of 5 stars Broke Chekov's Rule
Reviewed in Australia on 29 July 2018
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I was disappointed with this novel. The two (2) things I was expecting did not happen, nor was the expectation subverted by the author:
(1) Beryl and her baseball bat. I was expecting her to mete out rough justice to the villain. This is where the author broke Chekov's Rule -- nothing eventuated from either Beryl or her bat;
(2) Tilly as the token Aborigine. She was treated as such by both blacks and whites. I was expecting her to rebel against this tokenism.

This novel has potential. It has the right central characters, Tilly and Gerald. Both of their character arcs fizzle out towards the end. They did have engaging stories and their characters developed realistically as they each met challenges.

An improvement would be to see how Tilly's and Gerald's stories are integrated in the ongoing Aboriginal narrative. This would be challenging as Aboriginal stories are told in situ. As the author explains in the afterword, stories are part of the landscape -- they lose meaning when told elsewhere.

This novel is difficult to read as a white Australian. One can recognise some very painful truths in the way whites treat blacks -- today and in the past. There is the embarrassing character of the white Aboriginal Support Officer, Maureen, who tells Aborigines what their culture is. Unfortunately, such characters do exist outside of fiction.
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JL nash
5.0 out of 5 stars SUPERB READ
Reviewed in Australia on 11 October 2019
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Wow- this book took me by the ankles, shook me upside down and made me see the story of each element of my now emptied pockets. It’s great - its different, it’s complicated, it’s clear - it’s rich READ IT I’m not telling you about the plot - go and read it for yourself - you won’t be disappointed
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Greg from Australia
4.0 out of 5 stars Indigenous people confronting the demons of their past, and present
Reviewed in Australia on 8 July 2018
Kim Scott's latest novel is about his own people and the country of his Noongar ancestors. Gerald Coolman is released from jail, intent on preserving the language and culture that he learned about from elders inside. He returns home to find moves afoot among the local community to return to Kepalup, a taboo place due to the massacre that occurred there.

Gerald's niece Tilly was raised white and only learned of her indigenous background when she heard from her dying father Jim, the elder who taught Gerald inside. She decides to go and seek out her long-lost family.

This is a story about a return to country under the most trying of circumstances. Not only are the Noongar haunted by the ghosts of their past, but the main characters have their own demons to deal with. For Gerald, it is the drug addiction that he is trying to shake by immersing himself in culture. Tilly has her own traumatic past to deal with, which follows her as she returns to Kepalup and encounters the white family that she was raised by.

Scott writes beautifully about the country that he grew up in and the casual racism that the Noongar encounter. The story is brutal in parts but is also amusing and hopeful.
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Jim KABLE
5.0 out of 5 stars To Know the Heart of the Country
Reviewed in Australia on 4 August 2017
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Moving, terrible, honest - visionary and redemptive. I have read earlier writing from Kim Scott and this adds further lustre to a national literature which offers the chance for true reconciliation!
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Martin Kerr
4.0 out of 5 stars Language of hate, oppression, hope and humanity
Reviewed in Australia on 3 January 2018
January 3, 2018
Martin Kerr
Language of hate, oppression, hope and humanity

Taboo
By Kim Scott
Picador Pan Macmillan, 2017, Sydney NSW, 287pp

When academics write novels they have to explain themselves in terms of what their aims and cultural objectives are. This is so in Drusilla Modjeska’s novel The Mountain (2012) and likewise with Kim Scott in his informative Afterword to Taboo. They are paid by the taxpayer and have to meet research criteria. In the case of Modjeska she compromises her novel with ‘politics’ and attitude to the point she avoids using words common with Papua New Guinea’s colonial past.
Scott is different. He could be any author with Noongar heritage, writing as he sees it, from prison, in the country, a town or city. There is a natural shambolic run in the story and in the language. He doesn’t need to explain himself. But an Afterword Kim Scott wrote, helpful to academics but not necessarily to the general reader. To continue in this mode, the novel could be re-caste as a text book for Noongar learners, introducing by way of end notes the words and language of the Noongar “‘The right words.’” (p112).
It took me a while to read this book; enjoy it small grabs. I was fortunate to have travelled through Western Australia’s Noongar country, Hopetown, and I walked and drove the steep hill through Ravensthorpe (Kepalup) in 2016.
The novel is about country and the people with a long connection to it, though they look white, almost, in many cases. The crossing points come from language, topography, massacres, rapes, relationships, marriages, land clearing, farming, harvesting and transport through the generations since the beginning of colonisation in the 1830s.
The story begins with the ending, though readers are not to know. Tilly was fostered by wheat farmers Dan and Janet Horton. Tilly, a school girl returns for the preparations for the opening of the Peace Park. Despite a Horton murdered by Noongar in 1881 resulting in a massacre on the Hortons’ properties Kokanarup, the Hortons (including Dan’s brother Malcolm) have much to offer Noongar descendants by way of knowledge of the landscape and artefacts found, many in the river beds.
Among the Noongar is a twin Gerald Coolman, in an out of prison but captivated by Uncle Jim (Tilly’s father) who taught him words of the ancient culture in prison. Gerry introduces Tilly to her relatives including Aunty Cheryl who with her mother Matilda have a relationship who the shadowy drug supplier and sometime parole officer Doug who happens to be the Dan Horton’s estranged son. Quietly and subtly Tilly is groomed and falls into drugs and depravity with Doug.
When Gerry Coolman is on a parole ordered bridging course at university, Tilly is at another school and visits an Aboriginal Support Officer who is knowledgeable but not really a Noongar. Aboriginal private school girls are supposed to learn how to dance Aboriginal style for a presentation at the college ball. Tilly is saved by this embarrassment in a message from Gerry to get down to Lake Grace.
In the lead up to the opening of the Peace Park Tilly becomes part of the cultural group rehabilitating from drugs and alcohol and preparing for a cultural response to the opening. They learn language and painting and visit historical sites in and around Hopetown and go fishing in a lake. They camp at a caravan park in the town, but Tilly is wary of Doug and also Gerry’s twin brother Gerrard.
Where is this revival of Noongar ways going? Nothing is straight forward. The bush changes with the wind, rain and seasons. Ghosts and artefacts are revealed in the waters and dried up creek beds (‘Dead white, their scarred bare arms silently beseeched the heavens,’ p231). Uncle Wilfred and others introduce words and language of the old times.
Dan Horton is set to pass his land over to Doug and Tilly, knowing little of his son’s nefarious activities. There’s a booze-up with locals at the local hotel; a fight, a car is stolen, local residents and artists team up with the Noongar. Doug dishes out drugs to the locals. Rehabilitation will have to start over again. It’s too late now that the Peace Park Opening is upon them.
An incident involving Tilly is uncovered. This Wirlomin mob knows what’s right and wrong. Humanity shifts and stirs in the atmosphere of bush, sea, granite rock sheets and crying birds. Will Tilly and others live to experience and enhance an ever expanding culture?
This is an excellent account of contemporary Aboriginal life.

Martin Kerr’s New Guinea Patrol was first published in 1973. His cult memoir, short stories and seven novels are available on Kindle.
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Barry crimmins
2.0 out of 5 stars and very boring, had to give it away
Reviewed in Australia on 6 September 2017
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Got to 25per cent, and very boring, had to give it away. The narrative & the content would be better expressed by a group of juveniles discussing their first footsteps in life.
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Top reviews from other countries

Matthew Pena
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read.
Reviewed in the United States on 25 August 2019
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Kim Scott is an incredible novelists. Will keep you entertained throughout.
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Matthew Pena
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read.
Reviewed in the United States on 25 August 2019
Kim Scott is an incredible novelists. Will keep you entertained throughout.
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JM
4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful writing, pace a bit slow but cleverly structured, powerful message
Reviewed in the United States on 1 September 2018
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Really beautiful writing, quite poetic and lyrical and intensely descriptive, along with quite a powerful and intricate plot involving an old Aboriginal massacre, Tillys coming of age story, the clash of cultures featuring the evil Doug, in contrast with his father Dans sincere attempts at reconciliation , and a warts and all portrayal of a contemporary indigenous group, with its variously talented, resilient nd not always well behaved members trying to find a sense of cultural identity in Australia today. Told with love and wry humour. Loved the cameo of social worker Maureen - says a lot.
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S. King Fan
3.0 out of 5 stars A talented author presents a difficult read
Reviewed in the United States on 17 November 2019
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It cannot be denied that Kim Scott is a talented author and one who put a great deal of thought and time into this book. Gripping synopsis, fascinating themes, a group of characters in a location that I've never approached before (aboriginal peoples in Australia, not a common occurrence in popular fiction), the book is one that falls out of my normal comfort zone, and unfortunately that also applies to the prose. Sentences and thoughts seemed disjointed, it's difficult to follow some of the narrative, and there were points where I made it a few pages only to discover I only recalled bits and pieces. Perhaps that's my fault, perhaps it's just something I'm not used to (and I've read Pynchon). Simply put, this is not the book for people that want an easy 300 page book to add to their "read" list; it's a book that deserves time and effort, patience, and maybe a bit of self reflection.

Also, it's a book that ultimately will require a second read, spent on trying to figure out what was really going on during that first read, what was likely missed, and HOW to properly read this.
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PB
4.0 out of 5 stars Important story, unusual style
Reviewed in the United States on 27 August 2017
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A difficult read that was difficult TO read. The language comes in snatches of thought. One has to surrender to that, and let it flow and build up pictures of people and places. While the story itself is hugely important, this book's narrative style may not be everyone's cup of tea.
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Jill I. Shtulman
3.0 out of 5 stars A book I admired but didn't quite love
Reviewed in the United States on 5 September 2019
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I’ve learned through time that there are books I admire and books I love. More and more, I err towards those I love because it is those books that tear down the wall between book and reader and let me thoroughly immerse myself.

Taboo is a book I admire. It’s a tale about a group of Noongar people who return to their lands about 100 years after white settlers massacred them on their ancestral land. At the center of the story is Tilly Coolman – young, flawed and searching for meaning.

The prose is slow-paced, mystical, poetic, fragmented and imaginative and requires a high degree of concentration and focus. The real world blends with the spirit world; current memory merges with the historical. I believe that at another, less harried time, I may have connected more thoroughly. I am intrigued enough to want to come back to this book, but not involved enough to want to do so right now.
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