Page Turners – November 2023 review
The Page Turners book for November was ‘Rabbit Proof Fence‘ by Doris Pilkington. This is an Australian book published in 1996, which is an account of the experiences of an Indigenous Australian family.
During the early 20th century mixed-race children were forcibly removed from their families and taken for schooling to make them more like white people. The book tells of three young girls (one of whom is the author’s mother) who escaped from the government settlement in 1931 and trekked over 1600 kilometres (990 miles) home by following the rabbit-proof fence, a massive pest-exclusion fence that crossed Western Australia from north to south. During their long journey they survived on everything from emus to feral cats, while narrowly avoiding the police, professional trackers and hostile white settlers.
This sounded like it would be an interesting and exciting story to read. However. although we all enjoyed learning about an episode in history that we were not aware of, the book itself was disappointing. The narrative is ‘clunky’ with none of the detail and description that would have helped draw us into the story and engage us with the characters. Although the book is quite short, the main characters are not introduced until about a quarter of the way through and their story is only briefly outlined. We can only assume that the author wanted to tell the story that her mother told her and was not interested in making up detail simply to create a good book.
The book was made into a film starring Kenneth Branagh which has been enjoyed by one member and we agreed that we would like to try to find a way to see this.
Although we definitely did not feel that this book qualified as a ‘page turner’, we would be happy to share a copy if you would like to read it for yourself – just get in touch.
Deborah Wallis, Convenor