The Serpent's Skin: Book Review
A
Wow, what a voice!
This strikes me when I read the first few pages of Erina Reddan’s novel The Serpent’s Skin.
Reddan’s voice is distinctly Australian, using true vernacular, such as gunna and em (for ‘them’) and adopting a fresh take on simple words, like: ‘A bit of new came up in me…’ and soon after ‘The big of it scared me.’ The words ‘new’ and ‘big’ take on fresh roles here. Similarly, she ‘backhanded a pile of clothes and they flew through the air and landed in a tumble on the floor.’ There’s such energy in this description, and it’s just one example of the energetic tone throughout the story.
Occasionally, this new style jarred slightly for me when specific phrases were repeated, particularly with the words ‘of’ and/or ‘fill’ (the big of it, full of it, etc.). This is a minor point in an otherwise brilliant voice. Other readers may find the effect on cadence to their liking, because equally there are many exquisite variations of these phrases: ‘the empty all filled up red’ and ‘when he was filled up mean’.
Like Tim Winton’s laconic writing of dusty families in rural Australia, Reddan is not afraid to tell it how it is and use raw language to do so. This is entirely appropriate. In The Serpent’s Skin, each family member is grieving their missing mother and the protagonist, JJ, is suspicious about what happened to her, so raw is spot on. Like Winton’s ‘white-anting’, perhaps some of Reddan’s fresh takes on verbs (Tessa ‘panic-signing’, being ‘parceled’ out the door or ‘clattering’ frozen scones onto a tray’) could make it to the next edition of the Macquarie Dictionary?
To make a story that has every character scared, sad and suffering, while ensuring readers don’t shy away from these big issues is no mean feat. These are flawed people that we recognise. Their hearts are in the right place, but their hearts have been broken, and they’re fighting to stay connected, find meaning, make sense of life.
In storytelling, there’s a lot of talk about writing ‘likable’ characters, which limits the writers’ scope for creating real, imaginative or simply less-than-perfect ones. Reddan has written her characters with a clear vision of their flaws as well as their redeeming features, while ensuring that the latter doesn’t make them saccharine. I felt compassion for even the least likeable character, which helped me understand his ‘type’. The way each member of the cast interacts and affects the other feels real yet fresh.
Finally, the setting is immediate and compelling. At her Melbourne book launch, Reddan said she based the story’s farm and house on where she was raised. I feel this. The landscape—physical, social, emotional—are so solid, feeding and driving the action, as well as always present in the background. The living effort, the sticking together, the poverty, are visceral on this marginal farm, as pigs are fed, cows milked and Max the cantankerous stud bull is tolerated.
The unbending hand of religion—and its inherent patriarchy—underwrite the setting, voice, characterisation and, ultimately, the page-turning plot. In response, the narrative is driven by the unrelenting motivation of the protagonist to learn the truth, to not sit back and be good, but wrestle with all of the lies until she understands her ‘unwashed past’.
Erina Reddan, Panterra Press, 2021