Anchor Point by Alice Robinson
Ten-year-old Laura makes a hasty decision that will haunt her for years after her mother vanishes into the bush. Despite her rage and grief, she gets to work managing the household, caring for her younger sister, and assisting her father in clearing their uncultivated land in order to establish a farm. Though they may own the land, they gradually come to the realization that they cannot tame it, just as they cannot run away from their past. No reader will soon forget the powerful and compelling Australian novel Anchor Point.
Anchor Point by Alice Robinson
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It’s far from a post-apocalyptic dystopian book, and it aims to inspire readers rather than depress them with doom and gloom. It is a family drama about white Australians who live in rural areas and occasionally go to major cities. Robinson is not hesitant to explore the nation’s Aboriginal roots because it is also about the native people of that island continent. The book initially seemed to materialize out of nowhere in Australia, where it made modest but encouraging literary waves while receiving little attention in North America or Europe.
It’s unfortunate because this is a fantastic sci-fi book that deserves to be read by more people. In 2015, I emailed Alice to inquire about the book. I was curious as to whether she wrote the book as a book about mourning or out of worry for an unmanageable near future.
The author does a fantastic job of allowing us to glimpse an earlier era of working the land and experiencing the benefits of that labour. Now that the gentrification and suburbanization are over, I’d love to see the sequel where…what comes with fire, drought, with climatic catastrophe, and a fresh necessity for hard work and knowledge of the land. The reader in me also wishes for greater growth and a little less psychological description in the aboriginal elements, which are also foreshortened in ways that bother me. But I also valued the depth of emotion I had while watching this family drama and its flawed characters.
Laura is ten years old when the narrative begins. She resides on a farm with her parents, younger sister Vik, and her family. Her mother Kath works as a potter and struggles to find free time. Bruce, Laura’s father, is upset when Kath vanishes inside her studio while oblivious to household duties and other obligations. Kath is upset with herself. She then vanishes after that. Searches turn up nothing about Kath. She is missing. Is she deceased? What took place? Laura is concealing information about Kath’s disappearance. The responsibility Laura undertakes on her own for years includes carrying around this secret. Vik, who is five years old, misses her mother tremendously as Laura soon matures into a mother.
Time goes by. As he gets older, Vik leaves the farm and pursues a profession in the city. Laura also departs, but she comes back when her father falls ill. Her personal life is suspended. Again. For years, the farm has been losing money. The dirt has been blown away as a result of Bruce managing the land as if it could be conquered and wrestled into submission. Clear-cutting, erosion, flood, fire, and drought all cause different kinds of damage. Then Laura? What lies ahead for her?
There are at least three distinct components to this novel, which covers 35 years. It starts with Laura’s story—her life, her decisions, and the results. The second topic is related to the environment we live in, including how we try to manage the land, how various people interact with it, and how, ultimately, our physical and emotional environments influence us. Thirdly, it discusses the various ways in which people react to situations, change, and one another. In the near future, right towards the conclusion of the book, there is a reminder that the city and the country are never truly distinct.
