At first sight, Denizen looks like another rural noir. Some bookshops place its red dirt cover in crime. Others in literary fiction. Some have called it a gothic thriller. It doesn’t really matter where it goes, such is the arresting nature of its content.
It was the sixth manuscript in three years for the young author, James McKenzie Watson. He knew Denizen was dark, but he wrote it for himself. He had begun writing as a form of therapy because he was a troubled child.
Then it won the Penguin Literary prize in 2021 for new Australian authors and it became clear this deeply personal story resonated with others.
McKenzie Watson lives in Dubbo in regional New South Wales, where he works as a nurse in oncology, but he is also trained in emergency nursing. The 29-year-old grew up about 150km away in the country town of Coonabarabran. He struggled at school and describes his childhood self as a sensitive boy who could not find his tribe.
In Denizen, he has created Parker, a nine-year-old boy in a country town. Parker fights with his parents, his school and himself. He suspects there is something wrong with his brain.
The book opens with Parker as a new father – an experience that sends him on a well-worn path back to his childhood. That emotional journey coincides with a camping trip back in his home town with old friends.
There begins a cleverly written story that reads like an emotional autopsy, shining light on the big issues: mental health, parenthood, inequity and Australia’s enduring rural myths.
Like life, Denizen is contradictory; equal parts savage and empathic.
“I think the emotional truth at the core of Denizen was that I felt very, very acutely as a child and teenager and I didn’t know how to sit with that. And I felt that there was something very wrong with me in terms of how intensely I felt,” McKenzie Watson says.
“I look back at that and realise it’s not normal for a nine-year-old to feel so intensely that they want to die as opposed to continuing to live.”
James describes his own mental health without flinching. He was a “destructive and self-harming teenager”. He felt as if he was in pain most of the time.
One of his great pleasures was amateur film-making, but his school attendance slipped and he finally left in year 11. In a town of 2,000 or so, it was hard to find mental health support and this is one of the themes he hopes readers take away from Denizen. As a result of that lack of support, his mother, father and brother bore the brunt of his behaviour.
“It must have been harrowing for my family to go through because they love me so intensely and could see that I was just actually on the brink of self-destruction.
“And I think the guilt and shame that I feel about how much I put them through is where the emotional authenticity and the plot of Denizen comes from, even though the specifics of the narrative are entirely different.”
During a telehealth consultation, a psychiatrist made the pivotal suggestion to check into a mental health unit six hours away in Sydney. The teenager recognised it might be the circuit breaker he needed to begin recovery. He moved three months later.
“I think I probably would have died if I stayed in the bush much longer. I am sure that is true for a lot of people.”
He says the treatment worked, but there were a “rocky” few years after that. While he was recovering, he lacked direction and it was a mental health nurse, who was also a talented musician, who suggested nursing might be a good way to support McKenzie Watson while he pursued creative work.
Given his history, it may seem odd that McKenzie Watson has returned to a country town. Yet he remains “powerfully drawn to the bush”, particularly the visceral nature of the landscape.
He says he would have ended up back in a rural place with or without nursing, because a lot of his “heart and soul was out there”.
“I came away from the bush with a lot of grief and guilt and distress for what my teenage years were like.
“I think part of it was a sense of unfinished business that wanted to go back and just spend more time there and work through my feelings about the bush, that part of the world. Which I feel like I’ve done [in the] last three years.”
• Denizen is published by Viking
• In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, Mental Health America is available on 800-273-8255
