fiction
Andrew Peek
Julia Lee
The Hunter
Viking $17.95pb, 170pp,
0 14028 351 X
'Martin David' is the Hunter, otherwise known as 'M' (we are
never told his real name) who flies into 'Tiger Town' in
Tasmania. His task is to find the last remaining thylacine, trap
or shoot it and smuggle specimens of hair, blood, ovar y and
foetus back to a multinational biotech firm in Sydney. He has the
latest maps and his own weapon. Accommodation has been arranged
in advance: he will stay in a local house with a mother and her
two young children. In the guise of university researcher
investigating the Tasmanian devil, his mission is to set traps
and find the elusive beast.
His quest for the tiger leads to longer and longer trips in the
bush. He becomes a doppelgänger of the tiger, at the same time
metamorphosing into a state described as 'natural' man, in which
he is acutely aware of natural process and the world around him.
Although he acts and sees himself as a loner, he also becomes
emotionally involved with the family he's staying with.
Unfortunately, a tragic accident happens before he can
demonstrate his feelings and he returns from a trip to the
mainland to find mother and children departed.
Eventually, M finds the tiger, an encounter handled dramatically
and with delicacy. It is a fitting climax. The beast's
dismemberment has a solemn, ritual quality about it, a reverence
which is beyond sentimentality.
The Hunter's setting, in rural Tasmania, pits hippie and
conservationist against back-woodsy yokels. The bush is by turns
impassive and threatening. In the best tradition of Tasmanian
gothic, it is a place of ghostly presences, beautiful, eerie
landscapes and 'devils', as the furry predator is simply called.
This is no god's country, this is godforsaken: it is perfect and
precise. Perfect thousand-year-old trees, their lowest feathered
branches almost tip-tipping; an open, soft and fragrant floor;
the hard petals of each pine cone divisible by the golden mean.
It is cold in here and dark, too, freckled with the faintest
light. No, no tracks can be left on this hallowed ground, not
even by the wind. So, this is where she has chosen to bring him.
She is, of course, the thylacine.
The basis of M's mission is that the tiger will supply valuable
genetic material for military purposes. We are told early on that
'by studying one hair from a museum's stuffed pup, the developers
of biological weapons' have found something 'capable of winning a
thousand wars'. This sounds closer to fable or X Files territory
than the gritty realistic mode in which Julie Leigh's debut novel
predominantly operates. The Hunter takes on an ambitious variety of issues, including ecology, bio-technology, philosophical
concerns, but doesn't always consolidate or resolve them. M's
role as undercover operative, returned from dangerous missions in
unidentified jungles, doesn't sit easily with aspects of his
character mentioned above. Even in its own terms, his role of
secret hunter lacks credibility. At one point, for instance, he
considers murdering two local youths and though he quickly
abandons the idea, he gives no thought to the danger this would
later expose him to. The would-be assassin in The Day of the
Jackal, say, doesn't hesitate to kill but always calculates the
risk.
M's chauvinistic attitudes to women (of Lucy, his landlady:
'fuckable, except that through the smoke he can detect the faint
sweat-smell of old unwashed sheets') go awkwardly with the
vulnerability he cultivates elsewhere. Sometimes, he sounds
poorly educated and struggles to find words, though he's also
given to fantasies about the existence of a tiger 'Atlantis', for
example. Lonely, inarticulate, vulnerable, misogynistic,
hard-boiled, out of touch with his feelings, M sounds like a
character assembled out of masculine stereotype and often comes
across as being just this. The effect is heightened by the use of
interior monologue, written in the present tense, taking us
directly into M's mind and leaving little room for ambiguity or
interpretation.