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Patrick Marlborough
Nock Loose - out 1st July
Nock Loose - out 1st July
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Sam's Review
“On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.”
“They blast Cold Chisel and kick off hell. The song choice is a bit on the nose but they’re not subtle people.”
The first is the opening line of Edith Wharton’s 1921 classic, The Age of Innocence. The second is the start of Patrick Marlborough’s latest work of fiction, Nock Loose. Both are funny, pointed, provocative commentaries on society. But while Wharton’s novel, set in the high society of 1870s New York, is intent on slyly pulling on your heart strings, Marlborough’s takes place in a present-day WA country town and wants to pull your heart strings out, BBQ them and fire them from a catapult over a dayglo castle wall. The two books could not be further apart in setting or tone, yet somehow, when reading them back to back last week, their similarities seemed as obvious as their contrasts.
Nock Loose is a Vonnegut-meets-Tarantino story of revenge. Its heroine is Joy, “a country girl from a small town where people liked to dress as knights and give each other brain damage”. The novel begins with her grieving the loss of her granddaughter in an arson attack, before rewinding to her chaotic childhood under the dubious parentage of “dyed-in-the-wool dud” and petty criminal, Conway Robyn. The Perth Royal Show, the Olympics, and a Japanese TV series based on a Manga comic, whisk her across the world until, as an adult, she is drawn back to her parochial, peculiar, hometown.
This town is Bodkin, founded by the ultra-violent Captain Bodkin and now lorded over by his descendants. The family wealth comes courtesy of several bounties: The Captain King’s claim from the government for stealing the land from its Indigenous owners; the cider empire he established; the empire’s more recent concoction, “Munter” energy drink; and Agincourt, an annual re-enactment of the French-English medieval battle of the same name (very loosely based by Marlborough on the Medieval Carnivale that takes place in Balingup each year). Agincourt was created by The Captain King and continues, two centuries later, as an orgy of drunkenness, violence and extortion of all outsiders who visit the town to take part; “For all Bodkinites, Agincourt was everything. It consumed their lives and healed their fates”.
It is the death of Joy’s granddaughter that propels the plot. Initially, the mystery of who committed the attack consumes the town, and we learn of its inhabitants via flashbacks to Agincourt’s past. But the mystery is soon forgotten by the Bodkinites when preparations for this year’s festival begin. Joy hasn’t forgotten, though, and when she discovers who started the fire, she retrieves her childhood bow and arrow, dons the Manga costume she wore in the Japanese TV series, and takes her own personal battle to the town’s streets, apple orchards and medieval recreations.
How on God’s green earth does this have anything in common with The Age of Innocence, you rightly ask. Certainly, there are no similarities in the writing style. While Wharton’s classic is an exercise in elegant restraint, Marlborough’s caper is a self-described “Literary Looney Tunes”. Yet in their love for the outsider; their shrewd observations of society’s petty conventions, and their desire to provoke the narrow-minded, the two novels are the most unlikely of bedfellows.
Nock Loose is an ode to the “veritable stampede of people who’d spent their entire lives caught somewhere between history, memory, make-believe and small-town gossip”. It’s a two-fingered salute to the small-minded, fearful and cruel who want to silence diverse voices. It’s a riotous celebration of individuality and acceptance. It’s scurrilous, huge-hearted and completely and utterly bonkers. If you love The Age of Innocence you’ll likely hate Nock Loose, but I think Edith Wharton might just recognise a kindred spirit.
Publisher Review
Joy is a gifted archer, a retired Olympian and a former stuntwoman on a cult Japanese tokusatsu show. Raised by a feckless grifter, her home is Bodkins Point. For 150 years, this small town has hosted an annual ultra-violent medieval festival called ‘Agincourt’. During the festival, Bodkins Point transforms – assuming a parallel identity that plays tug-of-war with the way its townsfolk live for the rest of the year.
In the aftermath of a terrible fire, Joy’s past and the town’s dark history are set on a collision course as she takes the furious road to revenge.
In this screwball comedy revenge thriller, Game of Thrones meets Wake in Fright meets Kill Bill meets The Simpsons— Nock Loose is like nothing else in OzLit.
‘Marlborough is that rarest thing: a dangerous Australian writer. Read them before it’s too late.’ Michael Winkler
‘Mad, rad and merciless: Australia’s own energy-drink-era Vonnegut.’ Sam George-Allen
‘Nock Loose runs a rake over decades of D-Grade Australian culture and draws a narrative between all that was caught between the tines. Feeling like the cinematic amalgam of a nineties daytime talk show, an op shop joke book, and a hijacked reddit thread, only Marlborough could (or would) write this book.’ Max Easton
‘Patrick Marlborough’s Nock Loose is a wryly post-modern and cynically satirical novel that hits the ground running and never lets up … audacious, macabre and deeply felt.’ Anica Boulanger-Mashberg, Books+Publishing
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