PARIS SAVAGES | KATHERINE JOHNSON | 2019

There is much to recommend this book: a little known but meticulously researched, true story about three K’gari (Fraser Island) Aboriginals who went to Europe in the 1880s with a German scientist and his teenage daughter. The two Aboriginal men Bonongera and Jurano, and one woman Dorondera are eager to go to England to inform the Queen that their people are under threat and need K’gari to be made into a reserve, as their home.

It’s a slow burn. Ostensibly a very human story about the five main characters and how they faced and observed experiments and human zoo sideshows all in the name of science, albeit a science we are surprised and indeed horrified at today.

It’s mainly told from the scientist’s daughter Hilda’s perspective and while she has some delightful, trusting and naïve views, it seems she is cast as our modern conscience. She starts out with such enthusiasm for the venture to showcase the culture and people she has grown up with and come to love.

As the author didn’t want to put too much narration into the Aboriginal characters out of respect, it does mean that we don’t get to really interact with them; we’re kept at a distance, much like the observers in the human zoos where they perform their everyday lives. We are given an insight into their culture through a spirit narrator every odd chapter or so. I hesitate to call this magic realism as I see it more as continuing their storytelling traditions.

Yes it slow until at least the half-way mark, a story simply told with not too much drama but you just know that it’s leading to such a lot more and all their lives are changed in the process.

It’s a long time since I’ve read a book where there’s no resolution, no tidying up of all the loose ends. And this book is all the stronger for it.