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Amazon.co.uk Review
The young Australian writer, Julia Leigh, has been hailed as a talent to watch in the 21st century. The Hunter, her first novel, is a strange and haunting story which opens straight onto the world of its protagonist, M: "The mini-bus takes fifteen minutes to arrive in town: "Welcome to Tiger Town" reads a sign by the highway, "Population: 20,000"". Assuming the identity of Martin David, Naturalist, M makes his preparations for a hunt: he, and the reader, will be spending some time in the Tasmanian wilderness in search of the legendary tiger, the thylacine. In crafted, measured and often beautiful prose, Leigh offers her readers glimpses of who M is, or might be, and what he is looking for. There is a hint that the thylacine's genetic material has been "declared capable of winning a thousand wars", a gift to bio-weaponry, but M remains detached: "M does not know, cannot know and does not want to know, but there is no question the race is on to harvest the beast". M's not wanting to know guides the narrative: he is solitary, unconnected, only occasionally giving in to the desires for human and sexual, contact which emerge through M's vague, yet somehow yearning, association with the woman and two children with whom he stays when not out on the hunt. But the feeling centre of the book is anchored elsewhere in the unique connection between M and the tiger, in Leigh's meticulous exploration of the beauty--and terror--of the relation between killer and killed. --Vicky Lebeau
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
The hunter arrives in an isolated community in the Tasmanian wilderness with a single purpose in mind: to find the last thylacine, the tiger of fable, fear and legend. The man is in the employ of the mysterious 'Company', but his sinister purpose is never revealed and as his relationship with a grieving mother and her two children becomes more ambiguous, the hunt becomes his own. Leigh's Tasmania is a place where the wilderness can still claim lives; where the connection between people and the land is at best uneasy and cannot be trusted. In prose of exceptional clarity and elegance, Julia Leigh creates an unforgettable picture of a man obsessed by an almost mythical animal in a damp dangerous landscape. The Hunter is the work of a compelling storyteller and a truly remarkable literary stylist.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Though some critics have said that this book resonates long after they have finished it, it resonates because its message is so bleak, even hopeless. And one suspects that Leigh, an Australian author, is intentionally playing with the reader here by turning "quest fiction" on its head, as she criticizes those who make a conscious decision to sacrifice the essence of humanity and compassion while despoiling Nature for profit.
"Martin David," which may or may not be a real name, is in search of the thylacine, a Tasmanian tiger which may be extinct. In no sense a "hero," Martin is being highly paid by a corporation to find the last tiger and to extract its DNA, to be used to clone it. He is so obsessed with fulfilling his mission, however, that he becomes virtually a hunting machine, referred to not by his name at all, but simply as "M." During days that he is not hunting, he stays with the Armstrong family, dysfunctional since the disappearance of the father, Jarrah Armstrong, and we see some niggling traces of humanity as M begins to respond to the two wonderful, resilient Armstrong children, desperately in need of his help.
In other "quest fiction," such as Faulkner's The Bear, the reader can easily distinguish between hunter and prey and gain some enlightenment about the role of man in the universe as the hunter's respect for his prey grows during the duration of the hunt. Here, however, the edges are blurred. Readers can never sure whether M or the thylacine is really the hunter. As our knowledge grows, so does our understanding of which is the more ruthless, and which, if either, triumphs during the hunt. Though the prose is brutally compelling and the sense of drama very high, the message here actually feels like a message, and it is very grim. Most readers will conclude the novel wishing it were the M's of the world who were becoming extinct--and that, perhaps, is the author's point. Mary Whipple
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Hunter is a brilliant short first novel by a young Australian writer,Julia Leigh, from Sydney. It has received rave reviews in the Guardian, Observer and Times Literary Supplement. What distinguishes it from much modern fiction is its combination or easy readability on the surface with a knack of revealing layers of subtext and meaning on rereading. Ostensibly about a mysterious "corporate" hired mercenary hunter seaching ruthlessly for the last Tasmanian Tiger (a large wolf like animal thought to be extinct) and his inability to relate to ordinary human feelings, through the widow and children of another naturalist who had perished on the almost mystic plateau which forms the Tiger's habitat (and is used metaphorically to separate the human caring world from the inhuman hard world of man the predatory beast), the novel is at another level an indictment of the managerialism, secrecy and sheer awfulness of modern big business. The resolution in advocacy of concern for the environment is perhaps not explicit enough but the sparse style and clever use of minor characters is very telling. The scenes with local yokels and hippy park rangers convey much in a short space. The creation of two worlds via the ascents and descents of the plateau remind one of Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree books . The contrast of the warm domestic scenes with the spaced out grieving widow and the hunter's very tentative clumsy attempts at human relationships with the brutal details of trapping and killing animals and bush survival is extreme. Read at the superficial level, the Tasmanian wilderness is deftly created with taut poetic writing and rings true. One feels that much detailed research has gone into this. The biotechnology is perhaps skipped over rather lightly as is the murky mercenary past of the unnamed Hunter (M).
I was reminded of Melville, Conrad, Hemingway and Patrick White when reading this book. In my view it is likely to become a classic
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book just mesmerised me. It is a book which asks the reader to imagine the character in any way in which they seem fit with very little description given to the main character. It falters slightly toward the end but even so this book is now one of my all time classics. I can not wait for Julia Leigh's next book. Congratulations Julia.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
too mysterious for your own good
A neat, short and elegant novel - you'll finish it very quickly but think and re-think it for a long time...
Published on 8 Sep 2009 by Mrs. K. stone
Could not get into this
I bought this book because I saw a review of it which raved about it. I see the reviews on Amazon do the same. Read more
Published on 20 Mar 2003
this is a brilliant writer ~ a brilliant book
I sat up all night to finish this story of a naturalist sent into the wilderness in Australia to hunt the last remaining Tyger. Read more
Published on 2 Mar 2000 by Ms. M. Wilde
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