The third novel from acclaimed Australian author Robbie Arnott comes garlanded with high expectations, and within six pages it’s clear that despite its fey title, Limberlost stands a good chance of living up to them. Arnott has an eye and an ear for description that can elevate otherwise quiet moments to something genuinely transcendent: “He resumed walking through Limberlost, his father’s orchard, the rabbit swinging stiff in his hand. Smoke hazed from the house’s chimney. Apple trees in a nearby paddock had taken on the glow of dawn. At Ned’s back the river shone, teal blinking into slate and cerulean, revealing a greater truth of colour.”
That is, by any measure, a gorgeous paragraph, and the rest of the novel is full of similar moments. Arnott’s prose is syntactically sparse but linguistically rich; not unlike that of Cynan Jones, or the writer who (at a guess) influenced them both and many others, Cormac McCarthy. Limberlost tells the life story of Ned West, the youngest son of a war-damaged Tasmanian widower and orchardist, from his early days as a quiet boy full of feelings he doesn’t have words for, to a terse young adult, a father struggling to understand the marks left by the past, and an elderly man trying to adapt to a changed and changing world.
