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The Hunter
An unnamed man arrives in a small community with only one purpose in mind: hunting the Tasmanian tiger. The Thylacine, creature of fable and fear, is thought still to be found out there in the wilderness, and this man must find it. In richly crafted prose, first-time novelist Julia Leigh creates an unforgettable picture of a damp, dangerous landscape and a man obsessed by an almost mythical creature.
170 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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About the author
Julia Leigh
8 books64 followersJulia Leigh (b. 1970) is an Australian novelist, film director and screenwriter.
Born in 1970 in Sydney, Australia,[ Leigh is the eldest of three daughters of a doctor and maths teacher. She initially studied law but shifted to writing. For a time she worked at the Australian Society of Authors. Her mentors included leading authors Frank Moorhouse and Toni Morrison.
Leigh is the author of the novels The Hunter and Disquiet, which received critical acclaim. The Hunter was adapted into a 2011 feature film starring Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill and Frances O'Connor. Leigh also wrote the screenplay Sleeping Beauty about a university student drawn into a mysterious world of desire. She made her directorial debut with this screenplay in 2011 Sleeping Beauty starring Emily Browning. Her film was selected for the main competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
Born in 1970 in Sydney, Australia,[ Leigh is the eldest of three daughters of a doctor and maths teacher. She initially studied law but shifted to writing. For a time she worked at the Australian Society of Authors. Her mentors included leading authors Frank Moorhouse and Toni Morrison.
Leigh is the author of the novels The Hunter and Disquiet, which received critical acclaim. The Hunter was adapted into a 2011 feature film starring Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill and Frances O'Connor. Leigh also wrote the screenplay Sleeping Beauty about a university student drawn into a mysterious world of desire. She made her directorial debut with this screenplay in 2011 Sleeping Beauty starring Emily Browning. Her film was selected for the main competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 187 reviews
December 16, 2019
Short but gripping, The Hunter is an existential Tasmanian gothic with a twinge of eco-noir and plenty of ‘modern classic’ vibes.
The premise is simple enough: an enigmatic, taciturn loner known as ‘M’ stalks a thylacine—believed to be the last of its kind—through the Tasmanian wilds at the behest of shadowy, nefarious corporate backers. It may sound like a standard ‘man vs beast’ story but it is so much more complex and affecting than that. This is not an action thriller, it is a minimalistic, nihilistic, journey into darkness.
Don’t be swayed by the low Goodreads ratings—the result of English Lit students being forced to read this book I suspect. Indeed, my library copy included some half-hearted underlining and a post-it note reminding the reader to be on the lookout for “THEMES” “QUOTES” AND “REFLECTIONS”.
That said, it is true that this is not a conventionally ‘enjoyable’ read. Leigh takes a very minimal approach to plot and character development. The focus is all tension and atmosphere. This book makes you think… but doesn’t tell you what to think. It’s powerfully emotional, but not in the way we are used to, with every feeling articulated and spelled out. Instead it’s a splinter jammed under your skin and left to fester.
At its centre is the quest for the (now mythic) tiger, a creature that may as well be the mascot for human devastation wreaked on the natural world. And so, the “THEMES” and “REFLECTIONS” seem to me to resound much louder now than they would have done 20 years ago, when The Hunter was first published. Moody, unsettling and uncomfortable and very much a book for our current times.
The premise is simple enough: an enigmatic, taciturn loner known as ‘M’ stalks a thylacine—believed to be the last of its kind—through the Tasmanian wilds at the behest of shadowy, nefarious corporate backers. It may sound like a standard ‘man vs beast’ story but it is so much more complex and affecting than that. This is not an action thriller, it is a minimalistic, nihilistic, journey into darkness.
Don’t be swayed by the low Goodreads ratings—the result of English Lit students being forced to read this book I suspect. Indeed, my library copy included some half-hearted underlining and a post-it note reminding the reader to be on the lookout for “THEMES” “QUOTES” AND “REFLECTIONS”.
That said, it is true that this is not a conventionally ‘enjoyable’ read. Leigh takes a very minimal approach to plot and character development. The focus is all tension and atmosphere. This book makes you think… but doesn’t tell you what to think. It’s powerfully emotional, but not in the way we are used to, with every feeling articulated and spelled out. Instead it’s a splinter jammed under your skin and left to fester.
At its centre is the quest for the (now mythic) tiger, a creature that may as well be the mascot for human devastation wreaked on the natural world. And so, the “THEMES” and “REFLECTIONS” seem to me to resound much louder now than they would have done 20 years ago, when The Hunter was first published. Moody, unsettling and uncomfortable and very much a book for our current times.
December 12, 2023
This is a fascinatingly strange novel which adheres to none of the usual conventions of plot or character. Set in the Tasmanian bush, almost all of it takes place in the mind, or through the attuned senses, of its central figure: a hunter known as ‘M’ who is on the trail of the last Tasmanian tiger.
‘M’ stands for ‘Martin David’, but this too is a pseudonym. We don't learn his name, his age, his appearance, or much about his past – there is just his heightened awareness of his surroundings, the daily routine of camps, snares, spoor, weather, the dangers and hidden messages of the landscape.
Periodically he returns to a rented room in a remote house where a mother and her two children are also living, unaware of his real mission. His inability to fully detach himself from their lives – to exist, as he wishes, emotionally isolated in the natural world – is a key part of what's going on under the surface here.
Around him are the hard facts of the Australian environment: currowongs, native cats, Bennett's wallabies, pineapple grass, Tassie devils, inchmen, cider gums, snow gums, yellow gums. But try as he might to immerse himself in it all, to become part of it, he can't stop his mind wandering, or sever his connection to the fundamentals of human relationships: desire, protectiveness, anxiety.
As a creation, M's character occasionally ventures into women-writing-men territory (no sooner does he exchange a few words with a woman than ‘he imagines what it would be like to fuck her, what kind of cunt she has’), but most of the time he is remarkably believable, precisely because of how little we know about him – an absence that allows our minds to fill in the gaps all the more plausibly. Leigh's writing is precise when it comes to the world around him, but wonderfully subtle when it comes to her deeper themes, which emerge organically. Like M, we follow them gradually, afraid to spook them. And on occasion, she is capable of breaking into wonderful flashes of simile: ‘Like a silver medallist, she musters up a smile.’
This is a short novel, but it lingers. Like the Tasmanian tiger itself, there's something mysterious, semi-mythical about it – what exactly does it mean? Is it gone? Or somehow still with us…?
‘M’ stands for ‘Martin David’, but this too is a pseudonym. We don't learn his name, his age, his appearance, or much about his past – there is just his heightened awareness of his surroundings, the daily routine of camps, snares, spoor, weather, the dangers and hidden messages of the landscape.
Periodically he returns to a rented room in a remote house where a mother and her two children are also living, unaware of his real mission. His inability to fully detach himself from their lives – to exist, as he wishes, emotionally isolated in the natural world – is a key part of what's going on under the surface here.
Around him are the hard facts of the Australian environment: currowongs, native cats, Bennett's wallabies, pineapple grass, Tassie devils, inchmen, cider gums, snow gums, yellow gums. But try as he might to immerse himself in it all, to become part of it, he can't stop his mind wandering, or sever his connection to the fundamentals of human relationships: desire, protectiveness, anxiety.
As a creation, M's character occasionally ventures into women-writing-men territory (no sooner does he exchange a few words with a woman than ‘he imagines what it would be like to fuck her, what kind of cunt she has’), but most of the time he is remarkably believable, precisely because of how little we know about him – an absence that allows our minds to fill in the gaps all the more plausibly. Leigh's writing is precise when it comes to the world around him, but wonderfully subtle when it comes to her deeper themes, which emerge organically. Like M, we follow them gradually, afraid to spook them. And on occasion, she is capable of breaking into wonderful flashes of simile: ‘Like a silver medallist, she musters up a smile.’
This is a short novel, but it lingers. Like the Tasmanian tiger itself, there's something mysterious, semi-mythical about it – what exactly does it mean? Is it gone? Or somehow still with us…?
August 12, 2019
I once had the pleasant experience of working in a fly in fly out basis into the beautiful island state of Tasmania. As is my want I used to haunt the bookshops, mostly 2nd hand, when I was able. With that I picked up this novel about a hunter looking for the last existing Tasmanian Tiger, or thylacine as it is also known. Apparently this is a novel of a sub-genre called Tasmanian Gothic, or at least that is what the book seller told me. This read is in a dark descriptive style with the fear and dread that Gothic literature entails and to be honest Tasmania is the perfect place to have such a sub-genre. It has a dark history from the days of British colonialism that made Van Diemen's Land a place of convict dread. Add to that the near genocide of the indigenous peoples up to such recent events as the Port Arthur Massacre. On my journeys through the state I am never anything but amazed at the road kill. I sometime think I have seen just about every native Australian creature dead on its roads and that can be a very disconcerting view of the road considering the sheer idyllic beauty of the vast majority of the country side. And as to the thylacine its extinction is debatably caused by human intervention. The authorities once had a bounty on its head because it was considered a sheep killer. Which leads to this strangely dark novel.
The major character, an individual called M, is on a disturbing mission to take out the last known thylacine. With that we get a chilling take on his hunters mind. He is a cold and calculated individual who, for most of the time, cares little for anything but his hunt. His generally cold and cool dealings with all he comes into contact with, along with his detached inner thoughts, are methodically told in sparse 3rd person prose that could leave the reader disheartened about the innate indifference of a man.
M stays with a family in between hunting that had difficult circumstances. The reader should have had sympathy, and empathy, for the family but a certain cold sparseness in the writing about them made for an almost neutral feeling in terms of any warmth. “A muscular and robust novel, yet with tremendous delicacy…..” says The Australians Book Review. I agree with the term muscular and if I had not known the author was female I would have said this was a very masculine novel. As to delicacy? I have to disagree. The family, for example, were hardly described with any form of delicacy.
This all sounds like criticism but it is not meant to be so. I actually think that the author has set out to achieve the effect it has had on me in terms of understanding the Hunters mind so with that it is a worthy read for anyone interested in the subject and the sub genre. Just don't expect to be entranced.
The major character, an individual called M, is on a disturbing mission to take out the last known thylacine. With that we get a chilling take on his hunters mind. He is a cold and calculated individual who, for most of the time, cares little for anything but his hunt. His generally cold and cool dealings with all he comes into contact with, along with his detached inner thoughts, are methodically told in sparse 3rd person prose that could leave the reader disheartened about the innate indifference of a man.
M stays with a family in between hunting that had difficult circumstances. The reader should have had sympathy, and empathy, for the family but a certain cold sparseness in the writing about them made for an almost neutral feeling in terms of any warmth. “A muscular and robust novel, yet with tremendous delicacy…..” says The Australians Book Review. I agree with the term muscular and if I had not known the author was female I would have said this was a very masculine novel. As to delicacy? I have to disagree. The family, for example, were hardly described with any form of delicacy.
This all sounds like criticism but it is not meant to be so. I actually think that the author has set out to achieve the effect it has had on me in terms of understanding the Hunters mind so with that it is a worthy read for anyone interested in the subject and the sub genre. Just don't expect to be entranced.
May 28, 2013
Under an assumed identity of Martin David, Naturalist, M arrives to hunt down the last Tasmanian tiger rumoured to exist within Tasmania. On the edge of the wilderness, he will soon slip into an untouched world of silence and stillness. Hunting the last thylacine, an animal extinct since the 1930’s, but a sighting has been reported.
Julia Leigh, born in 1970 in Sydney, Australia, has received critical acclaim even though she has had a very small writing career so far. The Hunter in 1999; a novella in 2008, Disquiet; and then she wrote and directed the 2011 movie Sleeping Beauty (not to be confused with the fairy tale). I tend to think that most of her acclaim came from people expecting great things from her after she was selected to be the protégé of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison in 2002 as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts international philanthropic programme.
The Hunter is an interesting novel because it follows a post colonial narrative which is unheard of for an Australian novel. When it comes to Australian adventure novels, most of the time characters just get lost in the wilderness not go hunting dangerous animals. This leads to an interesting portrayal of the thylacine, which I will look at later. The Hunter may be a stripped back quest narrative but it feels very American and masculine for an Australian female author. American in a sense that the hunt narrative could be compared to Moby Dick, Old Man and the Sea and even The Bear, comparisons which she has acknowledged. Masculine in the way she gives approaches this novel with detachment, contempt and control over the death hunt subject matter. You could compare the paired back minimalist prose to something found in hard-boiled fiction, but not quite.
M is the archetype of a hunter, a figure that inhabits the story rather than one the lives in its world. There are not too many details of this character, but he seems to have similar characteristics as the hero in a spaghetti western. Ruthless, cold, calculating and inhuman but never unethical; though the lack of character development is an important part of this book. It forces the reader to keep him at arm’s length so we can study him. It’s almost like Julia Leigh has been taking active steps so that we never warm to him.
He is never a role model or anti-hero; he is just a faceless man in pursuit of the last remaining thylacine. What does the thylacine represent in this book? Imagination, hope for the future, guilt of the past, living in harmony with nature or a biotech ghost in a Tasmanian gothic novel? It’s up to the reader to decide, but while we are on the subject of the thylacine, does this animal both represents the Australian wildlife, an animal going extinct to raise global awareness as a form of Ecocriticism or is it supposed to be an animal that could harm or kill the hunter? These are the questions that I believe Julia Leigh wants us to ask as readers.
Julia Leigh setups a situation where the reader has to reason with their imagination and emotions in order to get the reader to think about what the author might be saying. I really like how you can read The Hunter as an adventure, a Tasmanian gothic or as ecocriticism. No matter which way you read this you are not wrong. I thought of this more as a western; just with the way the protagonist was portrayed and the people drinking in the bar reminded me of those rednecks drinking in a saloon in those spaghetti western films. I’m interested to see how people read this book and just see what they got out of it.
The review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/...
Julia Leigh, born in 1970 in Sydney, Australia, has received critical acclaim even though she has had a very small writing career so far. The Hunter in 1999; a novella in 2008, Disquiet; and then she wrote and directed the 2011 movie Sleeping Beauty (not to be confused with the fairy tale). I tend to think that most of her acclaim came from people expecting great things from her after she was selected to be the protégé of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison in 2002 as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts international philanthropic programme.
The Hunter is an interesting novel because it follows a post colonial narrative which is unheard of for an Australian novel. When it comes to Australian adventure novels, most of the time characters just get lost in the wilderness not go hunting dangerous animals. This leads to an interesting portrayal of the thylacine, which I will look at later. The Hunter may be a stripped back quest narrative but it feels very American and masculine for an Australian female author. American in a sense that the hunt narrative could be compared to Moby Dick, Old Man and the Sea and even The Bear, comparisons which she has acknowledged. Masculine in the way she gives approaches this novel with detachment, contempt and control over the death hunt subject matter. You could compare the paired back minimalist prose to something found in hard-boiled fiction, but not quite.
M is the archetype of a hunter, a figure that inhabits the story rather than one the lives in its world. There are not too many details of this character, but he seems to have similar characteristics as the hero in a spaghetti western. Ruthless, cold, calculating and inhuman but never unethical; though the lack of character development is an important part of this book. It forces the reader to keep him at arm’s length so we can study him. It’s almost like Julia Leigh has been taking active steps so that we never warm to him.
He is never a role model or anti-hero; he is just a faceless man in pursuit of the last remaining thylacine. What does the thylacine represent in this book? Imagination, hope for the future, guilt of the past, living in harmony with nature or a biotech ghost in a Tasmanian gothic novel? It’s up to the reader to decide, but while we are on the subject of the thylacine, does this animal both represents the Australian wildlife, an animal going extinct to raise global awareness as a form of Ecocriticism or is it supposed to be an animal that could harm or kill the hunter? These are the questions that I believe Julia Leigh wants us to ask as readers.
Julia Leigh setups a situation where the reader has to reason with their imagination and emotions in order to get the reader to think about what the author might be saying. I really like how you can read The Hunter as an adventure, a Tasmanian gothic or as ecocriticism. No matter which way you read this you are not wrong. I thought of this more as a western; just with the way the protagonist was portrayed and the people drinking in the bar reminded me of those rednecks drinking in a saloon in those spaghetti western films. I’m interested to see how people read this book and just see what they got out of it.
The review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/...
January 3, 2015
From IMDb:
Martin, a mercenary, is sent from Europe by a mysterious biotech company to the Tasmanian wilderness on a hunt for the last Tasmanian tiger.
Martin, a mercenary, is sent from Europe by a mysterious biotech company to the Tasmanian wilderness on a hunt for the last Tasmanian tiger.
October 4, 2021
(*Tentatively) This was...OK. I'm hovering between a two and a three. We have a fellow named M who has assumed the identity of Martin David, (naturalist) and enters the Tasmanian wilderness to find the final surviving Thylacine. Once he finds it, he's going to kill it. This is not your typical hunter though, the purpose of his hunt is not bloodlust or thrill, it's something much more noble, something much more subtle.
Because of the nature of the storyline (that's a pun by the way) this book emits a kind of eerie stillness. For the vast majority the narrative is just M and the Tasmanian wilderness and his thoughts therein. Credit where it's due, if this book does one thing well its create the atmosphere of being alone in the Tasmanian wilderness; A snapped twig, a owl hoot perhaps. Even the writing style seems to have the volume turned down really, really low. This could have worked, but rather than creating a tension Leigh just creates a sense of boredom. This doesn't lull you into a false sense of security. It lulls you into somnambulism. It's not that the writing is bad, it's quite evocative in parts, but all it seems to invoke is stillness and silence. Like visiting an abandoned holiday destination on a dismal winter day.
There are added complexities. Leigh leaves a lot of the plot misted in uncertainty and I quite enjoyed the books gaps and ambiguities. There are perhaps interesting questions in this book about the nature of human kind's place in the world, specifically in relation to the increasingly small places in the earth we might call 'wilderness'. But these questions are quite subtle, you sort of have to dig for them. This isn't bad in and of itself, but I was often left feeling that some of the concepts in this book could have been explored more fully. You're sort of led halfway down the path. Perhaps that was Leigh's intention, but it feels like she was shying away from complex questions rather than leaving their natures ambiguous.
The thing I liked most about this book was that it played with your expectations. I think people who pick it up who identify with 'green' politics will finish it feeling alienated. It may not provide the resolution for which you hoped or expected. All that said, this book was just sort of...average. No character, setting, or aspect of the narrative was quite intriguing enough to leave any significant impression on me. If a friend asked me to recommend a book, Australian, ecological or otherwise. This would be nowhere near the top of the list.
Because of the nature of the storyline (that's a pun by the way) this book emits a kind of eerie stillness. For the vast majority the narrative is just M and the Tasmanian wilderness and his thoughts therein. Credit where it's due, if this book does one thing well its create the atmosphere of being alone in the Tasmanian wilderness; A snapped twig, a owl hoot perhaps. Even the writing style seems to have the volume turned down really, really low. This could have worked, but rather than creating a tension Leigh just creates a sense of boredom. This doesn't lull you into a false sense of security. It lulls you into somnambulism. It's not that the writing is bad, it's quite evocative in parts, but all it seems to invoke is stillness and silence. Like visiting an abandoned holiday destination on a dismal winter day.
There are added complexities. Leigh leaves a lot of the plot misted in uncertainty and I quite enjoyed the books gaps and ambiguities. There are perhaps interesting questions in this book about the nature of human kind's place in the world, specifically in relation to the increasingly small places in the earth we might call 'wilderness'. But these questions are quite subtle, you sort of have to dig for them. This isn't bad in and of itself, but I was often left feeling that some of the concepts in this book could have been explored more fully. You're sort of led halfway down the path. Perhaps that was Leigh's intention, but it feels like she was shying away from complex questions rather than leaving their natures ambiguous.
The thing I liked most about this book was that it played with your expectations. I think people who pick it up who identify with 'green' politics will finish it feeling alienated. It may not provide the resolution for which you hoped or expected. All that said, this book was just sort of...average. No character, setting, or aspect of the narrative was quite intriguing enough to leave any significant impression on me. If a friend asked me to recommend a book, Australian, ecological or otherwise. This would be nowhere near the top of the list.
March 26, 2017
A quite depressing read.
M is a hunter paid by some third party to find, kill and bring back the body of a Tasmanian Tiger, an animal believed to be extinct.
M is an ex-soldier and mercenary. His experiences have left him emotionless so he approaches his task methodically and obsessively. He cares nothing about the why it's all about the how.
This lack of emotion also plays out with the family he lives with between his hunting tramps. The father has died in the bush, leaving the mother dependent on pills to handle depression and two children to fend for themselves. M looks at the mother with some sympathy but in the end M has some vague sexual thoughts but no obsession so there is no coming together of the two.
The writing is also unemotional, bleak and dark. It questions what humankind does to the environment and too each other.
M is a hunter paid by some third party to find, kill and bring back the body of a Tasmanian Tiger, an animal believed to be extinct.
M is an ex-soldier and mercenary. His experiences have left him emotionless so he approaches his task methodically and obsessively. He cares nothing about the why it's all about the how.
This lack of emotion also plays out with the family he lives with between his hunting tramps. The father has died in the bush, leaving the mother dependent on pills to handle depression and two children to fend for themselves. M looks at the mother with some sympathy but in the end M has some vague sexual thoughts but no obsession so there is no coming together of the two.
The writing is also unemotional, bleak and dark. It questions what humankind does to the environment and too each other.
August 25, 2023
I normally have a no disrespect for my books rule, but this one was the exception. I am prepared to burn it.
I have literally 5 pages left of the book (I had to read it for school) and I cannot bring myself to open this book back up. It felt like it was being dragged on and honestly felt like nothing happened.
I have literally 5 pages left of the book (I had to read it for school) and I cannot bring myself to open this book back up. It felt like it was being dragged on and honestly felt like nothing happened.
October 28, 2022
In the Tasmanian wilderness there is a sighting of a Tasmanian Tiger, a thylacine, thought extinct from 1930. A seeker arrived at the small community close to the sighting, sensing an opportunity for fame, but has been missing for several weeks. His family, wife and two small children, have rented a house in the village, to be ready in the small chance of his return, or more realistically, to grieve.
In turn Martin arrives, supposedly seeking the Tasmanian Devil, but actually on a quest for the tiger. He stays with the grieving family between expeditons into the wilds of the plateau.
Leigh's writing is quite mesmerising. There is something of a fable about it, and it has a predatory feel to it, allegorical in its dealings with humanity in the lengths some will go to for reward; that we as a race may be teetering on the brink of extinction.
In turn Martin arrives, supposedly seeking the Tasmanian Devil, but actually on a quest for the tiger. He stays with the grieving family between expeditons into the wilds of the plateau.
Leigh's writing is quite mesmerising. There is something of a fable about it, and it has a predatory feel to it, allegorical in its dealings with humanity in the lengths some will go to for reward; that we as a race may be teetering on the brink of extinction.
September 20, 2019
So incredibly beautifully written that I couldn't put it down despite the sometimes grim and gruesome content. The explorations of nature and being at one-ness with it are extraordinary.
It is amazing to me that this is someone's first novel.
Later note: I can't stop thinking about this novel. It's depth continues to growing post reading. Amazing. It is a beautifully written antithesis of ecofeminism. I'll be referring to this book and it's metaphoric statements about neoliberal patriarchal systems in my doctorate.
It is amazing to me that this is someone's first novel.
Later note: I can't stop thinking about this novel. It's depth continues to growing post reading. Amazing. It is a beautifully written antithesis of ecofeminism. I'll be referring to this book and it's metaphoric statements about neoliberal patriarchal systems in my doctorate.
September 11, 2009
did not keep my interest. did not get to page 40. did not finish.
December 25, 2011
I can't even imagine how a movie was made from this. Ugh. I can't believe I paid for the BOOK, there is no way I will waste more time on the MOVIE.
October 1, 2021
I'm unsure about this book. It was sad and dark. It had lovely descriptive passages and was thought-provoking in some ways. I just felt like I was missing the point a bit. 3.5 stars I think.
July 8, 2023
Splicing together muscular prose with moments of profound tenderness, ‘The Hunter’ tracks the venatorial pursuits of an unnamed man tasked with harvesting the DNA of the last thylacine—the Tasmanian tiger, previously thought to be extinct. Leigh’s moody and atmospheric evocation of the wilderness of Tasmania is striking, even extraterrestrial at times; her evocation of the titular hunter’s almost-cryptozoological pursuit, heart-pounding and hypotonic; the existentialism of the predator-prey relationship, ensnaring and enigmatic. Another reviewer referred to this as an eco-noir Tasmanian Gothic and I think that captures it well, for a straightforward thriller or ‘Man vs. Beast’ narrative this is not—I suspect it will be ringing in my ears for quite a while now. Looking forward to watching the film adaptation with Willem Defoe.
January 11, 2023
Definitely my least favourite for my gothic fiction class, but still a good one in its own right. I only started to get interested like 60% through though :/
October 25, 2024
a hauntology of lost futures
September 5, 2021
What an odd little book. Did I like it? I am not sure. I don't think I disliked it. Actually, I have watched the movie adaptation years ago and I don't remember much about it other than this similar feeling that it was kind of alright but not as good as it should have been, and a bit scratching as to what the point could be or at least, and more importantly, what I am taking away from it. In both cases I am not quite sure. Maybe I rewatch the movie soon and in conjunction I'll gain some epiphanies. Or not. (This sentiment sums up my reading experience pretty well.)
There are themes of nature and wilderness vs rules of civilization but I am not sure how well those are truly explored. Obsession and masculinity have some moments in here but I am, again, not quite sure what statements are being made in the end. You know how sometimes when you read male authors writing female characters you can tell and not in a good way? I was thinking the reverse thing here that Leigh tries to give us a crude but in that sense regular guy but it didn't always ring 100% authentic to me, a bit too much here and there (as in on the one hand he doesn't seem that interested in relationships and sex but then as soon as the lady of his lodging house talks to him wonders what "her cunt looks like", not quite sure I buy that juxtaposition). Then again, the writing has an indeed hypnotic quality, the hunt for the last Tasmanian Tiger, our narrator's thoughts and how he approached his business, his interactions with the family he is staying with during that time: it was all rather intriguing but also aloof in certain way. That's how I would describe this short novel: hypnotic, intriguing, aloof.
I expected a kind of wow or click moment from the ending, it is the kind of tiny, quiet novel where you expect the ending to put everything into a specific light and I feel like that didn't happen. Probably just didn't get it but it was not the outcome I expected. I was here for complete downward spiral of our protagonist and we get the start of that but it doesn't go anywhere. I also expected the question as to whether there is an actual Thylacine running in the wild to stay more mysterious. And because this novel left such a wishy-washy but not unpleasant taste in my mouth I am already forgetting details of it.
2.5*
There are themes of nature and wilderness vs rules of civilization but I am not sure how well those are truly explored. Obsession and masculinity have some moments in here but I am, again, not quite sure what statements are being made in the end. You know how sometimes when you read male authors writing female characters you can tell and not in a good way? I was thinking the reverse thing here that Leigh tries to give us a crude but in that sense regular guy but it didn't always ring 100% authentic to me, a bit too much here and there (as in on the one hand he doesn't seem that interested in relationships and sex but then as soon as the lady of his lodging house talks to him wonders what "her cunt looks like", not quite sure I buy that juxtaposition). Then again, the writing has an indeed hypnotic quality, the hunt for the last Tasmanian Tiger, our narrator's thoughts and how he approached his business, his interactions with the family he is staying with during that time: it was all rather intriguing but also aloof in certain way. That's how I would describe this short novel: hypnotic, intriguing, aloof.
I expected a kind of wow or click moment from the ending, it is the kind of tiny, quiet novel where you expect the ending to put everything into a specific light and I feel like that didn't happen. Probably just didn't get it but it was not the outcome I expected. I was here for complete downward spiral of our protagonist and we get the start of that but it doesn't go anywhere. I also expected the question as to whether there is an actual Thylacine running in the wild to stay more mysterious. And because this novel left such a wishy-washy but not unpleasant taste in my mouth I am already forgetting details of it.
2.5*
November 5, 2019
Having seen the movie and having loved it, I decided to read the book. This turned out to be one of those times when the movie was actually better, though the book is plenty good, too.
I've tagged this "Aussie" but it actually takes place in Tasmania, where the supposedly extinct thylacine has been spotted. A shady multinational corporation of some kind hires a fixer and sends him to Tasmania with orders to find the thylacine, kill it, take blood and tissue samples, and bring them back. They believe there is something in the animal's biology that will be greatly valuable to them. In the movie, it's a (non-existent) toxin. In the book it's left oblique.
This fixer, a hunter known only as "M", takes lodging in a ramshackle home where a grieving drug-addled widow and her two remarkable kids--a boy and a girl--live. He introduces himself as "Martin David" and gives them the attendant spiel that he is a naturalist from University there to study Tasmanian devils.
Much of the book takes place out in the bush, with "M" setting his traps, making his observations, marking his maps and so forth. Sounds dull, but it isn't at all. He spends 12 days out, then 2 back at the house, a cycle repeated several times. For a while it seems as if there may be something between the controlled, cold-blooded hunter and the woman, or if not her, then with her kids. But it passes like a breeze and "M" remains cold and distant to the end.
Does he find the thylacine? That would be telling. I will say that the ending is different in the book than in the movie. The book may be, strictly speaking, more (depressingly) realistic (or not), but I preferred the movie in a number of respects. Nonetheless, this is a book well worth the read.
I've tagged this "Aussie" but it actually takes place in Tasmania, where the supposedly extinct thylacine has been spotted. A shady multinational corporation of some kind hires a fixer and sends him to Tasmania with orders to find the thylacine, kill it, take blood and tissue samples, and bring them back. They believe there is something in the animal's biology that will be greatly valuable to them. In the movie, it's a (non-existent) toxin. In the book it's left oblique.
This fixer, a hunter known only as "M", takes lodging in a ramshackle home where a grieving drug-addled widow and her two remarkable kids--a boy and a girl--live. He introduces himself as "Martin David" and gives them the attendant spiel that he is a naturalist from University there to study Tasmanian devils.
Much of the book takes place out in the bush, with "M" setting his traps, making his observations, marking his maps and so forth. Sounds dull, but it isn't at all. He spends 12 days out, then 2 back at the house, a cycle repeated several times. For a while it seems as if there may be something between the controlled, cold-blooded hunter and the woman, or if not her, then with her kids. But it passes like a breeze and "M" remains cold and distant to the end.
Does he find the thylacine? That would be telling. I will say that the ending is different in the book than in the movie. The book may be, strictly speaking, more (depressingly) realistic (or not), but I preferred the movie in a number of respects. Nonetheless, this is a book well worth the read.
April 7, 2013
A sparse yet beautiful book about a hunt for the now mythical Tasmanian Tiger, but really a meditation on loss, responsibility and the life that is missed when we focus only on our goals.
With wonderfully descriptive, but yet brief and almost workmanlike language, Julia Leigh conjures up the gnarly and rough country of Tasmania’s uplands and one man’s professional and entirely focused dedication on finding in this misty and dense country an example of the supposedly extinct Thylacine.
Patience, focus and dedication are required and pursued as the man melds into the forest and plateau and we are showed the nature and precision of his craft. Yet it is in the interludes when he has to return to basecamp, a farmstead suffused with grief, inhabited by Bike, Sass and their Mum. The man is patient and professional and resists and turns from their need, but as the hunt endures he is more exposed to their messy and complex and human lives. Whilst on the plateau he is the Hunter, almost animal, his goals paramount and all consuming, no more so than any other creature.
People need people and the cult of the lone wolf, the man alone, the Hunter, can come at a terrible price. It is when we turn our backs on other people that we truly miss our goals.
With wonderfully descriptive, but yet brief and almost workmanlike language, Julia Leigh conjures up the gnarly and rough country of Tasmania’s uplands and one man’s professional and entirely focused dedication on finding in this misty and dense country an example of the supposedly extinct Thylacine.
Patience, focus and dedication are required and pursued as the man melds into the forest and plateau and we are showed the nature and precision of his craft. Yet it is in the interludes when he has to return to basecamp, a farmstead suffused with grief, inhabited by Bike, Sass and their Mum. The man is patient and professional and resists and turns from their need, but as the hunt endures he is more exposed to their messy and complex and human lives. Whilst on the plateau he is the Hunter, almost animal, his goals paramount and all consuming, no more so than any other creature.
People need people and the cult of the lone wolf, the man alone, the Hunter, can come at a terrible price. It is when we turn our backs on other people that we truly miss our goals.
April 4, 2012
In “The Hunter” by Julia Leigh, a man goes into the wilderness to hunt the elusive Tasmanian tiger, the thylacine. Doesn’t sound very interesting, does it? I only picked up this book for two reasons: it was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2000, and I could use the location for a global reading challenge. I was quite surprised at how very good this book is.
The writing style is impeccable and I was completely mesmerized. Even when Leigh is just describing a plant or detailing the traps the man constructs, she held my attention. Interspersed with the man’s trek for the creature is the story of his interactions with the family with whom he stays when he goes back to civilization for supplies. The family - a mother and her two young children - are struggling to cope after their husband/father went missing a year earlier. The characterizations of these family members are very well done and their grief is tangible and real.
“The Hunter” is a profound allegory about seeking and yearning and an insightful meditation about the essence of humanity. It’s a quick read (less than 200 pages) and I definitely recommend it for those who appreciate thought provoking tales.
The writing style is impeccable and I was completely mesmerized. Even when Leigh is just describing a plant or detailing the traps the man constructs, she held my attention. Interspersed with the man’s trek for the creature is the story of his interactions with the family with whom he stays when he goes back to civilization for supplies. The family - a mother and her two young children - are struggling to cope after their husband/father went missing a year earlier. The characterizations of these family members are very well done and their grief is tangible and real.
“The Hunter” is a profound allegory about seeking and yearning and an insightful meditation about the essence of humanity. It’s a quick read (less than 200 pages) and I definitely recommend it for those who appreciate thought provoking tales.
October 20, 2011
Of course I am attracted to any book about the mysterious thylacine and any book set in the equally mysterious wilderness of Tasmania.
I first read this book when I was in high school and have just reread it now that it's be made into a movie, which I will be interested to see.
This book is probably not for everyone. I wouldn't have thought it was for me, given the title. I can't explain exactly why I like this book. I don't find the main character, M, at all appealing. His mission appalls me and the ending is not the one I would have hoped for. I guess there's something alluring about the lonesome wandering the unseen wilds of Tasmania, which is rendered besutifully by Leigh's writing, and curious in the strange family M stays with and the relationship he develops with them despite himself.
I first read this book when I was in high school and have just reread it now that it's be made into a movie, which I will be interested to see.
This book is probably not for everyone. I wouldn't have thought it was for me, given the title. I can't explain exactly why I like this book. I don't find the main character, M, at all appealing. His mission appalls me and the ending is not the one I would have hoped for. I guess there's something alluring about the lonesome wandering the unseen wilds of Tasmania, which is rendered besutifully by Leigh's writing, and curious in the strange family M stays with and the relationship he develops with them despite himself.
March 11, 2014
I didn't enjoy this book at all. I personally found it too crude and it lacked a proper ending which was disappointing.
June 1, 2018
“The Hunter” is a sad, bleak and thought invoking story that makes you question what human nature truly is. Leigh Julia’s work feels weighted and dark but at the same time, it does not sinister. “The Hunter” follows the story of M, a naturalist hunter and ex-mercenary/soldier that is paid by people to find the last Tasmanian Tiger, kill it and remove any trace of its extinction. M’s character is very interesting and draws you, almost like a drug, you want to learn more about him, you want to discover his past but even as we draw closer to the end of the short novel. He is near emotionless and has ‘cleansed’ his soul of any attachment or relationship to anything. All he feels is the exhilaration of the hunt and this is strengthened through the silence and him reverting to more primitive senses. His relationships with others is also another focal point of the novel. Because he doesn’t feel emotions unlike the family he resides with he can’t form strong bonds with the Armstrong family but through his intelligence, he can deduce how they are feeling and this leads to some very interesting interactions between them. All in all “The Hunter” is a great read, its bleak and obsolete feel make it powerful and compelling.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 17, 2022
This was a 3.5/5 for me, but this damned app doesn't do half stars, and I can't justify rounding up here.
Liked the story. Didn't like the writing. I do love it when the focus of the plot is not actually the point of the story -- there's a reason this book is titled after the character, and not the act he is committing. The hunt is not important; the scattered references to mysterious corporations and super-powered children are not important; the entire world outside of this Tasmanian forest is not important. What is important is the titular character and his development -- only, by the end of it, no real change has occurred. Which, I get. Rejection of the predicted character trajectory works sometimes. It's a statement on how humanity reacts and responds to trauma and heartbreak. But it didn't work for me here.
The vibes were cool tho. I still wouldn't live in Tasmania (not because I'm scared of tigers in the forest so don't even think that).
Liked the story. Didn't like the writing. I do love it when the focus of the plot is not actually the point of the story -- there's a reason this book is titled after the character, and not the act he is committing. The hunt is not important; the scattered references to mysterious corporations and super-powered children are not important; the entire world outside of this Tasmanian forest is not important. What is important is the titular character and his development -- only, by the end of it, no real change has occurred. Which, I get. Rejection of the predicted character trajectory works sometimes. It's a statement on how humanity reacts and responds to trauma and heartbreak. But it didn't work for me here.
The vibes were cool tho. I still wouldn't live in Tasmania (not because I'm scared of tigers in the forest so don't even think that).
April 25, 2019
25/04/2019
I read this for school and it took me over a month to read it, if that tells you anything about how much I appreciated having this on my reading list. This wasn't terrible but I'm sure as shit glad it's over.
I read this for school and it took me over a month to read it, if that tells you anything about how much I appreciated having this on my reading list. This wasn't terrible but I'm sure as shit glad it's over.
October 14, 2025
awful
February 26, 2023
It's endlessly hilarious to me that 'Tasmanian Gothic' is a real literary genre that exists like that's insane but I get it
July 6, 2013
I saw the 2011 film starring the perfectly cast Willem Dafoe before I read the source novel, so what struck me most – and what I want to comment on here – were the differences between the texts. Obviously, books can explore the protagonist's interior world in a way a film can only hint at, and what made this book so enjoyable was the effortless way Leigh shows her taciturn protagonist M shifting gears from being a stranger in an alien landscape to being utterly, intuitively at home there, and the way his imagination takes flight.
It's a story about belonging. M is hunting a thylacine – a Tasmanian tiger – that has managed to stay hidden in its own country from interloping humans. He's only the latest in a long line of humans to go searching for the tiger, but he stands the best chance of finding it because he is willing to surrender to the land, to become part of it, to tap into his own most atavistic self. The subplots involving the bereft Armstrong family, whose patriarch Jarrah disappeared in this landscape, their hippie friends, the young doofus park rangers and the surly logger locals, also tap into conflict over whose land this is, or should be.
The film got the meditative atmosphere completely right. I think it might even have been more meditative than the book, which is noteworthy for the unfussy, elegant simplicity of its writing. What kills me are the plot changes the film made for dramatic effect. If I were Julia Leigh I would be annoyed.
The film is much more conspiratorial than the book. There are more deaths in the film, Jack Mindy has a much bigger and more sinister role, and both the local logger townsfolk and the biotech corporation that employs M are presented as actively threatening, heightening his feelings of paranoia and persecution. Jarrah Armstrong is portrayed as a former employee of M's company, which murdered him to keep him quiet about the tiger, whereas in the book his fate is much more ambiguous.
At the same time, the film showed M's unsentimental loner tendencies softening as he becomes closer to the Armstrong family. There was a deliberate attempt to associate M with the tiger – both are loners, survivors, and both are hunted as well as being hunters. Here, however, it's a much more loose, allusive story about a seasoned company man's obsessive work practices. M does actually fantasise about physically becoming the tiger at one point, but there isn't the same metaphorical bond between them that the film suggests.
In the film, when he's overcome by wonder and pity, and even At the end of the film, M and there's a strong suggestion he plans to start a new kind of life, to be a different kind of man.
I found the book's ending much more confronting and less sentimental. M's atavism, his ability to become one with a landscape, is presented as an instrumental job skill that makes him useful as a company man. This job hasn't changed him; it's just the latest in a series of similar challenging illegal hunts that constitute his work. This is powerful because it goes against the reader's sentimental hope that the landscape will 'claim' him somehow, will change him, make him more sympathetic, less calculating. But Leigh stays steadfast to the hunter-prey dialectic set up earlier in the book: M must keep hunting or be destroyed.
It's a story about belonging. M is hunting a thylacine – a Tasmanian tiger – that has managed to stay hidden in its own country from interloping humans. He's only the latest in a long line of humans to go searching for the tiger, but he stands the best chance of finding it because he is willing to surrender to the land, to become part of it, to tap into his own most atavistic self. The subplots involving the bereft Armstrong family, whose patriarch Jarrah disappeared in this landscape, their hippie friends, the young doofus park rangers and the surly logger locals, also tap into conflict over whose land this is, or should be.
The film got the meditative atmosphere completely right. I think it might even have been more meditative than the book, which is noteworthy for the unfussy, elegant simplicity of its writing. What kills me are the plot changes the film made for dramatic effect. If I were Julia Leigh I would be annoyed.
The film is much more conspiratorial than the book. There are more deaths in the film, Jack Mindy has a much bigger and more sinister role, and both the local logger townsfolk and the biotech corporation that employs M are presented as actively threatening, heightening his feelings of paranoia and persecution. Jarrah Armstrong is portrayed as a former employee of M's company, which murdered him to keep him quiet about the tiger, whereas in the book his fate is much more ambiguous.
At the same time, the film showed M's unsentimental loner tendencies softening as he becomes closer to the Armstrong family. There was a deliberate attempt to associate M with the tiger – both are loners, survivors, and both are hunted as well as being hunters. Here, however, it's a much more loose, allusive story about a seasoned company man's obsessive work practices. M does actually fantasise about physically becoming the tiger at one point, but there isn't the same metaphorical bond between them that the film suggests.
In the film, when he's overcome by wonder and pity, and even At the end of the film, M and there's a strong suggestion he plans to start a new kind of life, to be a different kind of man.
I found the book's ending much more confronting and less sentimental. M's atavism, his ability to become one with a landscape, is presented as an instrumental job skill that makes him useful as a company man. This job hasn't changed him; it's just the latest in a series of similar challenging illegal hunts that constitute his work. This is powerful because it goes against the reader's sentimental hope that the landscape will 'claim' him somehow, will change him, make him more sympathetic, less calculating. But Leigh stays steadfast to the hunter-prey dialectic set up earlier in the book: M must keep hunting or be destroyed.
May 29, 2020
This is the book the 2011 movie of the same name was based on.
An ecocentric story, it contemplates the nature of mankind, wild animals and the wilderness. The writer doesn't 'develop' the main character as many stories do, but pulls you into his feelings, and detachment from the human world.
The subsequent movie and the book are very different, with different endings.
An ecocentric story, it contemplates the nature of mankind, wild animals and the wilderness. The writer doesn't 'develop' the main character as many stories do, but pulls you into his feelings, and detachment from the human world.
The subsequent movie and the book are very different, with different endings.
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