Little World

Susan Midalia's Review

Australian writer Josephine Rowe’s most recent novel, Little World, begins with the arrival of an unnamed child in a box in the West Australian Kimberley desert. The story immediately locates us in a world of bizarre uncertainty. Is the child alive or dead? Has she had sainthood bestowed upon her? How does she observe the people around her without them knowing that she’s there? The novel uses these mysteries to explore crucial ethical issues: the destructive effects of colonialism, the violence perpetrated against women, and the hypocrisy of institutionalised religion. Structured in three parts and moving in time and space—from the 1950s to the present day and across several continents—Little World is also a tribute to the power of nature. It asks us to consider whether meaning is to be found in the physical environment instead of in worshipping God.

The structure centres on three solitary figures. Orrin Bird, a retired researcher living in the Kimberley, is sent the body of the unnamed child by a colleague living in Nauru. That man is Kaspar Isaksen, a pitiful alcoholic tormented by the fate of the lepers for whom he was meant to care. The third character—the last in what we might regard as a secular version of the Holy Trinity—is Mathilde Eberhart, an Australian daughter of German migrants who has been forced into a home for unmarried mothers. What connects the three characters is the unnamed child’s concern for their ordinary humanity: their recognisable needs and fears, and their small acts of kindness in a brutal world.

Little World asks us to pay attention to the violence and injustice of history and contemporary society. Its voice is variously angry, detached, and lyrical; its language is sometimes spare, sometimes exquisitely poetic. Its elliptical mode requires us to connect its various threads, and deliberately leaves us stranded, like the child, with unanswered questions. At 132 generously spaced pages, it is more like a novella or a long short story than a novel, but there’s nothing “little” about its compassion for suffering people. And while the literary critic Beejay Silcox, not averse to “trashing” works of Australian fiction, claims that Little World lacks “heft”, in my view she misses the point: this isn’t a book that offers immersion in a gradually unfolding narrative, but a taut story to be read in one sitting, allowing us to experience its intricate shape and to reflect on the questions it poses.

Josephine Rowe, now based in coastal Victoria, has won multiple awards for her previous fiction, but I suspect she remains relatively unknown in Western Australia. In my view, she is one of our most intelligent and interesting writers, as well as a brilliant stylist. I’m a huge fan of her three short story collections, and her A Loving, Faithful Animal, focused on a veteran of the Vietnam War, is one of my favourite Australian novels. Little World—enigmatic, unresolved, unapologetically demanding—won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I think it thoroughly deserves its recent shortlisting for the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Little World is available at the Lane Bookshop.