Safe Return Doubtful

Australia – Published 2024

Satirical novels can usually be read in two ways, either looking for something that isn’t always there in each sentence, re-reading passages because there may be a hidden meaning therein, or just straight up, as it comes. In this, 750 page epic, I’d encourage the latter as otherwise one needs to set aside a few weeks.

Specifically, it is the story of two brothers, 17 years old Aboriginal Sovereignty and 8 year old Tommyhawk, and, to a lesser extent, their parents, Cause Man and Dance Steel, who live in an Aboriginal community. The patriarch, Cause Man, is known as the donkey man, as he has come up with a scheme to ease climate problems caused by vehicles by buying up every donkey he can find, there are 5 million feral donkeys in Australia, to transport people and goods around initially his locality, and eventually the whole country; indeed, to replace Qantas one day. Dance is the moth woman, as she follows butterfly songlines across the country, searching for a people smuggler to take her to China to trace her ancestral heritage.
This introduction to the community of Praiseworthy takes up about 70 pages, and is easy reading and quite humorous, but things then get much darker and more complicated.

8 year old Tommyhawk is a fascist, beaten up by social media into something of a mess, with an online existence as much as an actual one. He despises his father and does what he can to get away from his family permanently. His older brother, named as Aboriginal Sovereignty as they were the words his father said the most, is a dancer and a boxer, with a 15 year old girl friend. He is informed on by Tommyhawk and taken into police custody for paedophilia. After which, he goes missing.

Once we get to know the children the lives of the parents fade into something of insignificance, such is Wright’s strength in writing about young people. The reader’s prime concern becomes what will happen to the children. That may be a strength of the novel, but it may also be a weakness. The underlying theme of it being a skit at Australian politics and bureaucracy become more concealed as the book continues. The disappearance and what subsequently happens to Aboriginal Sovereignty is so affecting that it is difficult to read as being allegorical.

There’s a lot to enjoy in the book, but ultimately it is a sad and nightmarish vision of the immediate future of an indigenous family who already have a grim existence. Reading it is a lengthy experience, not just because of its 700+ pages, but also because the language Wright uses is beautiful but complex. It is plot driven, but it may take 50 pages to move from one strand to the next, which is why if it is given time, as a whole it is an extremely rewarding experience.