Under Silkwood spins a slippery tale which unfolds in the brooding mysteries of far north Queensland where it’s so hot the bitumen steams, cassowaries, crocs and feral pigs wander through suburban backyards and cars are coated in red dirt.
Author Greg Bourke nods to Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood and Kenneth Cook’s Wake in Fright and to novels which feature the sugar cane industry as a backdrop. Judy Nunn’s Elianne and GS Johnston’s Sweet Bitter Cane spring to mind.
Under Silkwood author Greg Bourke
In Under Silkwood, Darcy Grant moves to Silkwood, a small sugar cane farming hamlet of largely Sicilian families, for his first teaching post. (Silkwood is a real locality between Tully and Innisfail in Far North Queensland.) Political, historical and social tensions abound within this largely Italian community. The locals are friendly on-the-surface, yet wary of the newcomer from down south. Darcy finds their ambivalence confusing, the tropical isolation confronting.
When Darcy is befriended by the Sicilian Russo family, he enjoys their warmth and hospitality, instigated by Frances Russo. Life improves. But when Darcy falls in love with Frances’s daughter Isabella and the pair begin a secret affair tension escalates.
Risky dalliance
Isabella has been promised to Carlo, a young cane worker. Darcy threatens that union and in doing so undermines the Russo’s Sicilian code of honour. It’s a risky dalliance and the author creates a convincing unease.
‘Afterwards Isabella lay recovering under a sheet… Although happy, she felt restrained. They could find places but couldn’t stretch time. They could find pleasure but little peace.’
Darcy knows they will be found out and that there’d be a line up to shoot him.
Frances is incensed when she finds out about the forbidden romance which becomes a vehicle through which Italian and Australian cultural differences are filtered.
Crooked dealings
Darcy is aware he has placed himself in danger but unsure if this comes from the Russos seeking revenge or from others involved in crooked dealings. Unwittingly he has stumbled across fraudulent enterprises.
Bourke’s debut novel is engaging. Eminently readable, it’s not easily classified, because it isn’t crime and it doesn’t follow the usual tropes of romance, but it is an entertaining hybrid with noir themes which could fit the category of a psychological thriller. Bourke describes it as ‘fiction that comes from a place of experience’.
The story captures the inner workings of the sugar cane industry, the shimmer of an exotic landscape, immigrants’ desire to uphold the values of their homeland and the plight of a newcomer struggling for acceptance in an unfamiliar community far away from home.
Vividly wrought
The 1980s is vividly wrought with mention of blockbuster hits, fashionable cars, trending clothes and social attitudes of the decade. Characterisation is colourful, including the rascally headmaster Rich Pierce who is delightfully devious. Leo, Darcy’s flatmate is another dodgy fellow. Gino, Isabella’s Dad, harbours dark secrets and the protective yet conflicted feelings of Frances, herself a victim of Sicilian values, are sympathetically drawn.
Isabella is perceived mostly through Darcy’s sexual idealisation of her and while she is convincingly coquettish, she presents as rather two-dimensional. Perhaps this is deliberate because Darcy is so taken by her physical charms he doesn’t factor in seriously enough the conventions of her heritage and the impact of her parents’ wrath, thereby amplifying his miscreant judgement.
Ironically, in flaunting Sicilian conventions and finding a means of meeting Isabella privately, Darcy falls foul of a criminal gang. Pressure mounts and the way ahead becomes murky as he navigates a path towards safety. This captivating novel concludes with an exciting and surprising twist.
Under Silkwood is published by Hawkeye Publishing and retails for $29.99.
