Enclave, Claire G Coleman’s third novel in five years, continues the project she started with Terra Nullius and laid out explicitly in last year’s essay collection, Lies, Damned Lies: “I must do what I can to change how this country sees itself.” As the Wirlomin Noongar writer has pointed out, so much classic speculative fiction is “intentionally politically didactic” – activism deployed in the Trojan horses of breathless plot twists, set design and special effects. “It’s a way to say things that otherwise no one will let you say,” she told an interviewer, “and that’s how I’ve always used it.”
Coleman’s targets in Enclave are clear: racism, homophobia, transphobia, inequality – all enabled, amplified, by an atomised, consumerist society. In the titular walled city, we meet 21-year-old Christine, who is wealthy, alienated and increasingly stressed out by security drones, heatwaves and artificial grass.
