The Fringe Dwellers
p. 85 · Read in the full issue
One of the interesting aspects of the growth of Australian literature in the last decade has been the high proportion of women writers among the successful authors. The latest on the scene, Nene Gare, in her first novel “The Fringe Dwellers”, deals with the problems of assimilation of Australian aborigines through the eyes of two girls, Noonah and Trilby.
LIKE many Australian women writers, Miss Gare tells her story competently and with real humour, but with a lightness of touch which fails really to convey “real life” as it is lived outside the evasions of magazine writing.
A certain lack of objectivity is common to these writers who tell a story without passing judgment on its characters, perhaps because women inhabit a less ruthless world than men —a world of intrigue, rivalry and ambition.
Anyway, Miss Gare illustrates the effect that several years’ boarding at a mission school has on the girls
when they return to their parents’ broken-down shack in an “abo camp” near Perth.
Trilby, who has come to under stand that ambition and energy con trol the lives of white people, cannot settle down to the make-shift and happy-go-lucky atmosphere of her parents’ home.
She is brought by her insight into the other world to rebel against the inertia of her race and family and to embark on a destructive journey be yond the confines of the aboriginal camp.—AF. (THE FRINGE DWELLERS. Published by Heinemann. 21/-.)