Talking About: Too Much Lip
Why We Chose This Book
Having won last year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award, this novel by Melissa Lucashenko appealed to us all: the blurb promised family drama, the possibility of love and an Australian setting.
The Participants
Ute, Theo, Marina, Rachelle.
And just like in any book club, some of us hadn’t quite completed the novel but were up for the discussion, anyway.
Plot Summary
Kerry Salter is not having a good week. Her girlfriend has dumped her, the police are after her, and her Pop is dying – so she has to head back to the home she has avoided for years. Kerry plans to spend 24 hours, tops, there but soon becomes enmeshed both in old family quarrels and in a new threat to their beloved river.
The Debate
Rachelle I really wanted to finish this one, but I found that I couldn’t read it in long spurts: the language was dense and there was a lot going on.
Marina I’m only about halfway. I loved what I read, but I did have to read it carefully to ensure that I understood it all.
Ute At the risk of sounding like a girlie swot, I read it twice, several months back, and again now. While I loved it the first time, re-reading it was a fascinating experience. You really got a window into an Australian experience that you’re not part of. That in itself is priceless. One of the interesting things was the sense of this sprawling family that extends beyond your siblings and your cousins. You may not even fully understand who everyone is, but you know they’re part of your mob.
M The family connections are raw but very real. The universal way that families treat each other – they would never treat someone else that way if they knew they were going to have to see them again.
Rachelle The characterisations were so vividly drawn. Right from the start, there’s Kerry, who’s returning home to be with her dying grandfather. She’s revving up her stolen Harley-Davidson, she’s talking to the roadside crows. It’s quite a picture.
U This is a slight spoiler, but the first time around, I read it very much from Kerry’s POV and took her character at face value. The second time, I saw the other characters more clearly. She is so angry with her brother Ken for much of the book, but they are very similar in many ways. They both have a lot of anger and a propensity to violence. Yes, Ken is scary, but he is bloody hilarious. I love when he threatens to harvest the organs from his lazy son. My favourite scene is when Ken is reborn as an activist and spouts lines like, “Oppressed peoples must be the agents of their own liberation”, while nagging his mum to put lunch on the table.
R Yes, there’s a lot that makes you stop, or laugh, or marvel. When Kerry takes her nephew Donny swimming, she chooses a place that she’s always returned to in her imagination. The author describes the “cormorants perched on fallen logs, their wings high, surrendering to invisible enemies”, this slice of beauty, even though there is tragic family history there, too, I found so poetic.
Theo I loved the use of Indigenous words, without explanation. I also felt she’d painted a great word picture of regional Australia. And I felt so sorry for the mother who was navigating her own trauma and hadn't been given the skills to deal with what was happening to her own kids.
U The book’s Afterword is chilling, where [Lucashenko] says that pretty much every act of violence has actually happened in her family. The novel is an indictment of white dispossession of blacks, but doesn’t let black people off easy. I think it’s Uncle Richard who says, “Us mob gotta learn to cry when we’re sober, might stop us killing each other.”
M It was a real risk when you think about it. To write about the violence, poverty and anger of a family takes incredible strength when it is loosely based on your own family experiences.
U I love where she writes about Donna, who looks like a success story – part of the white world – but she has a fear of being “instantly 16 again, with a world of pain inside her head and absolutely nowhere safe to go”. It’s a powerful description of how hard it is to leave trauma behind.
M What I related to is that most families have dysfunction and so there were some relationships that we could relate to. But what we don’t have to deal with on an ongoing basis is the overlay of a racist society, where you naturally treat those in authority with suspicion and distrust because you know what will happen if you put a step out of line, or even if you are just too visible.
U I agree. You really understood why this family was so mistrustful of authority. There is a scene featuring a tense confrontation with police, and one of the family says, "Is anyone filming this?" And of course one of them is, because it's their only real defence. As things heat up, he says again, "Still filming...", giving the police a warning. One of the other gut-wrenching things I'd never thought about, relating to the Stolen Generation, is when the mother says you've gotta be careful when you get involved with another Indigenous person, because you can't be sure you're not related. So many families torn apart, you just don't know. I'd never considered that.
T We shouldn't forget the lead character is bisexual as well as Indigenous, which is a bold decision by the author, too.
U The character that bugged me the most was Steve, her white boyfriend. He was so underwritten, just a generic good guy. But then I wondered: is he designed to be the token white bloke? We’re all familiar with tokenistic tropes like the gay best friend or the token Asian character. I wonder if the author is trying to make her white readers feel what it’s like to be tokenised?
R I studied English literature at university and I don’t feel like I was ever given a book like this. I don’t feel like I was ever really introduced to my country’s culture and heritage in a way that would have been so meaningful to me at that age. For a long time, I felt like an outsider in Australia because I’m first-generation Australian. I think if I’d known more stories like this existed, I would have felt more of a connection.
T I agree that we need more stories with Indigenous characters but the issue is how we surface them. Written language is not how Indigenous Australians pass on their culture and so the novel is an invader art form. The issue with so-called reconciliation is that white people just want Indigenous Aussies to be like white ones. Where are the moves to get white people to behave in an Indigenous way?
R So final thoughts?
U The thing about this book is, it'll shake you up, but I loved reading it – I laughed out loud so often. It's just bloody funny.
M It was kind of a rollercoaster read. I was angry for them one minute, then sad the next. And then I could also laugh amid some of the horror, which was quite surprising.
T As a piece of literature it was engaging and interesting but I'm looking forward to her next novel, when she's honed her craft more. I loved the view into a society I know next to nothing about, and came away feeling a little more knowledgeable. But I felt the end was sentimental.
U I think she's so good with character, with humour, and so understanding of both anger and empathy. I was happy to go on the journey with her.