THE CHOKE | SOFIE LAGUNA | 2017

Oh my goodness! Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2015 for Eye of the Sheep, Sofia Laguna is a powerhouse writer, getting into the heart and mind and core of the reader. When I thought I might read this book I wondered if the young girl narrator would be a bit precious, a bit shallow or twee. I was utterly wrong. Her voice is strong, confused, and fearful; wanting to believe there’s a better life, wanting love.

The writing did take me a little while to get into the rhythm and from the start I felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding. But, once into the story I could not put it down.

Starting around 1971, Justine is ten years old; she lives with her ailing Pop, a survivor of the horrors of the Burma Railway during the Second World War. Her parents have run off, with her father only occasionally returning to cause havoc. Justine is both troubled and neglected, a double whammy for a girl trying to make sense of the world and her place in it. But for Justine it’s such a narrow world.

Surrounded by next to hopeless adults, and bullied at school she could easily have become one of those awful statistics we read in the news. She’s mistreated and betrayed, but she isn’t an idiot.

The choke is a place on the Murray River where the banks come close to meeting, where Justine feels at one with nature and safe. As she grows into a teenager she doesn’t understand why she cannot read or write or tell the time but puts it down to snippets of overheard conversations about her complicated birth. As she says: “It was because I was born back to front. My words were breech, like me.”

What a powerful device this writer has used. We don’t know the actual details of our birth and as children we do overhear adult conversations, and blame ourselves for a myriad of complications in our lives beyond our control.

The story races at a mighty pace but every word, every description is acutely necessary to the plot. There is nothing superfluous or gratuitous. Yes this book is raw and bleak and haunting and hard going at times and I cannot remember the last story where I had a few tears. But I feel all the richer for having read it.

Simply masterful writing.