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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Great fun!, 25 Oct 2003
This well written book is startling and just plain fun to read. There are not many other authors who would dare to begin with the opening sentence, "Pardon the stench," then go on to describe in graphic horror the slaughter of the whales in Hobart Town, while chastising you for not arriving sooner, "when you would have smelt eucalyptus blossom and lavender." Obviously playing with the reader from the opening page, Gilling is so entertaining with his story that the reader plays along, too, delightedly participating in this wild, carnival experience.When a strange, seal-like offspring is "born" to a former convict woman in Van Dieman's Land, now Tasmania, everyone gets in on the action. Thought by some residents to be a sooterkin, a kind of goblin, we see that the creature, "Arthur," is a brother to Ned, a meal ticket for his larcenous mother, who sells peeks at him, and a source of much curiosity to the townspeople. Poking fun at everyone's views of reality, Gilling here satirizes all levels of Tasmanian society, from the local pamphleteer, who declares that if it looks like a seal and acts like a seal that it is a seal, to the Reverend Kidney, who tries to find a place for it in the theological chain of being. And since we readers do not know, for sure, exactly what the creature is, we become willing and amused participants in the author's greatest joke of all--on us. In prose that is perfectly suited to his broad but light-hearted satire, Gilling keeps the reader constantly entertained with his terse descriptions and ironic detachment. To the question of what it is like to be kissed by a seal pup, for example, he answers tersely, "It's like nuzzling tripe. Or blowing your nose on a stinging nettle." A short novel with bold and offbeat humor, startling imagery, and unforgettable action scenes, Sooterkin will amuse those looking for a literary change of pace. Mary Whipple
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