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Entitlement
Eight years after the mysterious disappearance of her much-loved brother Eliot, Cate McConville finally returns to the family farm – only to discover her ageing parents want to sell it and sever her only remaining link to him.Forced back to the landscape of her childhood Cate is haunted by memories of Eliot and all that has kept her away. Determined to find her brother and retain the property, she enlists the help of family friend Mellor, her aunt Natalie, and Finchley, the man who has followed her from Sydney on a whim.All have secrets of their own to hide, but Cate senses it's the land itself that holds the key to unlocking Eliot's fate, and the part of her that went with him.Entitlement is a compelling story about loss, the heart, and the meaning of home
- GenresContemporary
260 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 22, 2012
2 people are currently reading
35 people want to read
About the author
Jessica White
7 books26 followersJessica White was raised in the country in northwestern NSW and, at age 4, lost most of her hearing from a bout of meningitis. Being a determined little girl, she refused to be daunted by her disability, but instead made her way from a tiny school of 100 pupils to publishing her first novel at age 29, before graduating with a PhD from the University of London.
Jessica’s first novel, A Curious Intimacy, was published by Penguin in 2007, and won a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award. Her second novel, Entitlement, was released by Penguin in September 2012.
Jessica currently works part-time as a research assistant in Brisbane, while writing her third novel and a book of creative non-fiction.
She can be found at www.jessicawhite.com.au
Jessica’s first novel, A Curious Intimacy, was published by Penguin in 2007, and won a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award. Her second novel, Entitlement, was released by Penguin in September 2012.
Jessica currently works part-time as a research assistant in Brisbane, while writing her third novel and a book of creative non-fiction.
She can be found at www.jessicawhite.com.au
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 14, 2018
Entitlement, by Jessica White: Author (Viking Books 2012) is a thoughtful account of a white family felled by grief, mirrored on a much larger scale by the loss of Indigenous people severed from family and country.
Eight years earlier, Cate McConville’s beloved brother Eliot disappeared. Now, with her aging parents keen to sell the family farm, Cate returns to the property to confront her past, unable to let go of the brother she has spent her adult life trying to find. With the help of Mellor, a man with a connection to this country long before her own family claimed the land, and a new-found friend Finchley who has followed her from Sydney, Cate tries to uncover the hidden secrets surrounding her brother’s disappearance, and navigate the complex history and culpability of her family’s possession of the land.
Entitlement is an easy-to-read novel that flows smoothly from the pages. Through a multi-voice narrative, we are given access to the perspectives of a diverse range of characters, and are able to empathise with varying points of view.
Nature – particularly the Australian bush – is reproduced with an intimate detail that can only have come from the author herself living in a similar environment, and we can sympathise with both the farmers who have worked the land for decades, and also the Indigenous people who have lived on the land for many thousands of years. This connection between the First Peoples and the land is given special consideration and meaning, and the often harsh and grim treatment of Indigenous people by white settlers not that many years ago is presented sensitively and with thoughtfulness, particularly the issue of the Stolen Generation, which is compared and contrasted throughout the novel with the McConville family’s loss of their son. In this way, the individual circumstances of Indigenous families are related with compassion. Eliot was only one; other (black) families experienced that loss magnified a thousand times.
So many of the delightful details of this book – the B & S Balls, the past-times of country kids, the dialogue of people living on the land, the sibling relationship – are so authentic and real that we get a sense of the author’s own voice behind them.
And as the author explores the meaning of Home, she allows each of the characters in this story to find their way through grief and loss, and attempt to lay claim to their own past, and to their own story.
Eight years earlier, Cate McConville’s beloved brother Eliot disappeared. Now, with her aging parents keen to sell the family farm, Cate returns to the property to confront her past, unable to let go of the brother she has spent her adult life trying to find. With the help of Mellor, a man with a connection to this country long before her own family claimed the land, and a new-found friend Finchley who has followed her from Sydney, Cate tries to uncover the hidden secrets surrounding her brother’s disappearance, and navigate the complex history and culpability of her family’s possession of the land.
Entitlement is an easy-to-read novel that flows smoothly from the pages. Through a multi-voice narrative, we are given access to the perspectives of a diverse range of characters, and are able to empathise with varying points of view.
Nature – particularly the Australian bush – is reproduced with an intimate detail that can only have come from the author herself living in a similar environment, and we can sympathise with both the farmers who have worked the land for decades, and also the Indigenous people who have lived on the land for many thousands of years. This connection between the First Peoples and the land is given special consideration and meaning, and the often harsh and grim treatment of Indigenous people by white settlers not that many years ago is presented sensitively and with thoughtfulness, particularly the issue of the Stolen Generation, which is compared and contrasted throughout the novel with the McConville family’s loss of their son. In this way, the individual circumstances of Indigenous families are related with compassion. Eliot was only one; other (black) families experienced that loss magnified a thousand times.
So many of the delightful details of this book – the B & S Balls, the past-times of country kids, the dialogue of people living on the land, the sibling relationship – are so authentic and real that we get a sense of the author’s own voice behind them.
And as the author explores the meaning of Home, she allows each of the characters in this story to find their way through grief and loss, and attempt to lay claim to their own past, and to their own story.
August 22, 2012
Cate McConville has not returned to her childhood home in eight years. After the disappearance of her brother, she could not set foot back on the family farm, preferring to stay in Sydney where she works as a doctor and devote her spare time to haunting message boards for missing persons, making and posting fliers seeking information on her brother and searching for him.
Now she has been called back to the farm because the syndicate of family members who own it wish to sell it. Cate knows she can never let that happen – the farm is Eliot’s home, it should be his. It needs to be there so that he has something to come back to. The only signatures missing from the contract are hers and Eliot’s and Cate will never, ever sign. And she makes sure that her parents, her aunt and her uncle and his wife know this in no uncertain terms.
Everywhere she goes back in her hometown and on the farm, Cate is haunted by memories of her brother – the times they shared, the moments, the milestones. Her parents seem to have given up hope – her father can’t wait to get off the land and retire somewhere else and her mother has buried herself in denial by cleaning obsessively. Cate doesn’t see how they can even consider selling the property and clashes with both of them, in particular her father. On her ‘side’ is her aunt who has lived for many years in the city, who Cate has always felt more connected to and Finchley, a man who has followed her from Sydney all the way to her hometown on nothing more than a whim. Cate is also enlisting the help of Mellor, an Aboriginal man who has worked on the farm for many years.
Entitlement was a book that was quite deceiving – originally when it popped up on the doorstep, I thought it was going to be another of the vastly popular rural romances that I’ve read plenty of this year. But it’s not – instead this is a story of loss, family, the land and indigenous issues. So if you look at the cover and think oh, this looks like a nice story about a city girl returning to her farm and finding love, that’s not exactly what you’re going to get. Our protagonist Cate is about 30 – she grew up on a farm in a remote area, running wild about the property with her brother Eliot. The two were ridiculously close – they were each other’s best friend as well as sibling and it seems like they were rarely, if ever, apart.
When Cate was a teenager, she began to clash with her father and that led her to seek a life in Sydney at University, studying to be a doctor. She would return to the farm on her breaks until she was about 21 or 22 when Eliot disappeared without a trace not long after he came to visit her in Sydney. Since then she has not set foot back on her family property, nor has she even spoken to her father. She lashed out at him and blamed him for Eliot’s disappearance, citing the pressure placed on Eliot by their father to take over the family farm when the time came. Cate suspected Eliot’s dream lay in other directions but he would sacrifice it for duty and when he disappeared she assumed that was the reason why, if it wasn’t foul play. Cate cannot bare to think that Eliot might never come home to them – something that it seems everyone else in the family has long accepted. Even though Eliot didn’t particularly desire to take over the farm, it was still his home and Cate is determined he should have that home to come back to.
Cate was a very hard character to connect to. We’re the same age and although I can understand what it’s like to be at odds with a parent (I too clash with my father, particularly when we spend too much time under the same roof!) I have to say that I think a lot of her actions were the actions of a much younger, or immature woman. She was fond of starting fights, yelling and then storming off to run out her frustrations. It’s clear that she’s angry, frustrated and very unsatisfied. She has no friends in Sydney, she has no partner, she barely speaks to her family. Her whole life revolves around attempting to find Eliot alive, which, after all these years, seems to be a hopeless task to everyone except Cate. There were times I found her so frustrating, although I did try to be sympathetic to her, given the close relationship the author carefully built up of her and her brother. The farm was worth quite a bit of money, enough for all of the parties involved to take a nice slice and make a life somewhere else for themselves, off the land and the work that came with it. It was Cate’s father that did pretty much the lion’s share of work on the farm – his sister, Cate’s aunt lived in Melbourne, Cate lived in Sydney, Eliot was missing and his brother, Cate’s uncle, did live on the property with his wife, but contributed very little work wise. I felt he was quite right in his desire to sell and enjoy what was left of his life, given his health was not great. The fact that Cate did not even attempt to see this sale as an attempt by other people to try and better their lives, was a bit blind.
Interwoven within the story are tales of the local Aboriginal population and that of the generations preceding this one – the ‘Stolen Generation’ and incidents of Aboriginals losing their land and being forced out of communities. I can’t say too much about this particular line of plot without ruining the book but I did have a bit of an issue with the way in which everything was resolved. The horror that was inflicted upon Aboriginal families up until probably around the 1970′s in terms of taking children away from their parents is undeniable and unquestionable. However, I do not particularly like this as a device for pretty much blackmailing Cate – dangling something in front of her that she could not refuse in return for something that was amazingly huge. I think that in this situation, it seems to have worked out for almost everyone – Cate got the answer she so desperately needed and the others also got what they wanted but I did have questions left at the end that I felt didn’t get answered. What happened to Cate next? Where did she go? How was she going to handle the huge financial responsibility she took on? What would become of the farm? How would the Aboriginals who had worked there gain an income?
This book had some strengths and some weaknesses. It wasn’t very long, under 300p so I feel that there could have been a little more definite closure and also some fleshing out of the budding romance which barely even qualifies as a romance. But I did enjoy that this book did go in a totally different direction to what I thought it would and also embraced and highlighted a very significant issue in Australian history as well as attempting to offer a resolution. I’m just not sure that I find that resolution entirely believable.
Now she has been called back to the farm because the syndicate of family members who own it wish to sell it. Cate knows she can never let that happen – the farm is Eliot’s home, it should be his. It needs to be there so that he has something to come back to. The only signatures missing from the contract are hers and Eliot’s and Cate will never, ever sign. And she makes sure that her parents, her aunt and her uncle and his wife know this in no uncertain terms.
Everywhere she goes back in her hometown and on the farm, Cate is haunted by memories of her brother – the times they shared, the moments, the milestones. Her parents seem to have given up hope – her father can’t wait to get off the land and retire somewhere else and her mother has buried herself in denial by cleaning obsessively. Cate doesn’t see how they can even consider selling the property and clashes with both of them, in particular her father. On her ‘side’ is her aunt who has lived for many years in the city, who Cate has always felt more connected to and Finchley, a man who has followed her from Sydney all the way to her hometown on nothing more than a whim. Cate is also enlisting the help of Mellor, an Aboriginal man who has worked on the farm for many years.
Entitlement was a book that was quite deceiving – originally when it popped up on the doorstep, I thought it was going to be another of the vastly popular rural romances that I’ve read plenty of this year. But it’s not – instead this is a story of loss, family, the land and indigenous issues. So if you look at the cover and think oh, this looks like a nice story about a city girl returning to her farm and finding love, that’s not exactly what you’re going to get. Our protagonist Cate is about 30 – she grew up on a farm in a remote area, running wild about the property with her brother Eliot. The two were ridiculously close – they were each other’s best friend as well as sibling and it seems like they were rarely, if ever, apart.
When Cate was a teenager, she began to clash with her father and that led her to seek a life in Sydney at University, studying to be a doctor. She would return to the farm on her breaks until she was about 21 or 22 when Eliot disappeared without a trace not long after he came to visit her in Sydney. Since then she has not set foot back on her family property, nor has she even spoken to her father. She lashed out at him and blamed him for Eliot’s disappearance, citing the pressure placed on Eliot by their father to take over the family farm when the time came. Cate suspected Eliot’s dream lay in other directions but he would sacrifice it for duty and when he disappeared she assumed that was the reason why, if it wasn’t foul play. Cate cannot bare to think that Eliot might never come home to them – something that it seems everyone else in the family has long accepted. Even though Eliot didn’t particularly desire to take over the farm, it was still his home and Cate is determined he should have that home to come back to.
Cate was a very hard character to connect to. We’re the same age and although I can understand what it’s like to be at odds with a parent (I too clash with my father, particularly when we spend too much time under the same roof!) I have to say that I think a lot of her actions were the actions of a much younger, or immature woman. She was fond of starting fights, yelling and then storming off to run out her frustrations. It’s clear that she’s angry, frustrated and very unsatisfied. She has no friends in Sydney, she has no partner, she barely speaks to her family. Her whole life revolves around attempting to find Eliot alive, which, after all these years, seems to be a hopeless task to everyone except Cate. There were times I found her so frustrating, although I did try to be sympathetic to her, given the close relationship the author carefully built up of her and her brother. The farm was worth quite a bit of money, enough for all of the parties involved to take a nice slice and make a life somewhere else for themselves, off the land and the work that came with it. It was Cate’s father that did pretty much the lion’s share of work on the farm – his sister, Cate’s aunt lived in Melbourne, Cate lived in Sydney, Eliot was missing and his brother, Cate’s uncle, did live on the property with his wife, but contributed very little work wise. I felt he was quite right in his desire to sell and enjoy what was left of his life, given his health was not great. The fact that Cate did not even attempt to see this sale as an attempt by other people to try and better their lives, was a bit blind.
Interwoven within the story are tales of the local Aboriginal population and that of the generations preceding this one – the ‘Stolen Generation’ and incidents of Aboriginals losing their land and being forced out of communities. I can’t say too much about this particular line of plot without ruining the book but I did have a bit of an issue with the way in which everything was resolved. The horror that was inflicted upon Aboriginal families up until probably around the 1970′s in terms of taking children away from their parents is undeniable and unquestionable. However, I do not particularly like this as a device for pretty much blackmailing Cate – dangling something in front of her that she could not refuse in return for something that was amazingly huge. I think that in this situation, it seems to have worked out for almost everyone – Cate got the answer she so desperately needed and the others also got what they wanted but I did have questions left at the end that I felt didn’t get answered. What happened to Cate next? Where did she go? How was she going to handle the huge financial responsibility she took on? What would become of the farm? How would the Aboriginals who had worked there gain an income?
This book had some strengths and some weaknesses. It wasn’t very long, under 300p so I feel that there could have been a little more definite closure and also some fleshing out of the budding romance which barely even qualifies as a romance. But I did enjoy that this book did go in a totally different direction to what I thought it would and also embraced and highlighted a very significant issue in Australian history as well as attempting to offer a resolution. I’m just not sure that I find that resolution entirely believable.
November 25, 2017
This was such a beautifully emotive read. Jessica White has to be one of the best writers of intimacy -- not just sexual, but small connections and gestures between people that convey so much. There's a mystery at the heart of this novel -- what has happened to Cate's brother Eliot? why did he leave? and what would make him leave the place he loves? -- that kept me turning pages while being entertained by minor characters such as the Aunties and concerned about the Cate's health as she fades away before our eyes. Issues about Native Title and connection to country are woven through the story from multiple perspectives in a nuanced and undidactic way.
Thoroughly recommend.
Thoroughly recommend.
August 23, 2012
Entitlement explores the grief, bitterness and anger of loss and estrangement. Eight years ago Eliot went missing and now his sister, Cate McConville, refuses to allow her parents to sell the family property while a chance remains that her brother may one day come home.
Cate's obsession with her brother's disappearance has had a detrimental affect on every facet of her life. While I was sympathetic to her overwhelming sense of loss, I found her largely selfish, cold and bitter. Her lack of empathy for others, particularly her mother, is disturbing, though perhaps is more understandable in terms of her relationship with her father. Only the glimpses of Cate as a child and teen showing her close bond with her brother offer some sense of redemption, yet even then, there is a subtle current of self centeredness in their relationship. I found I grew increasingly frustrated by Cate failure to acknowledge her own contribution to the dysfunctional family dynamics.
The relationships within this family are central to this story. Cate's father, Blake, is almost wholly unlikeable. Though I did feel some pity for him because of his current physical pain, I was appalled by his racism and his attitude towards his daughter. Nora, Cate's mother, seems weak in the face of the behaviour of her husband and daughter. Elliot largely remains an enigma through out the novel with only Cate's memories giving him life. He has been missing eight years when the novel begins, simply walking away one morning with no further trace. What specifically kept me reading Entitlement was my desire to know Eliot's fate and I found I developed several theories as to why Eliot would disappear as the novel progressed.
Loss is the major theme of Entitlement explored not only within the McConville family, but also within the indigenous mob that lives on the fringes of the family property. Mellor, the McConville family's longtime farmhand, has a family history defined by loss, from the loss of his tribe's native land and culture to the forcible removal of aboriginal children from their parents. This element is a significant aspect of the story.
Told in the third person, at times I found the way the narrative segues from the present to memory with little warning disconcerting. The pace of the novel is measured yet White skillfully sustains the suspense throughout the story, despite the lack of urgency in the plot. I thought the tone stylish with evocative descriptions of the Australian landscape and it's people.
Though there is closure for the McConvilles's, and Mellor's mob, there is no happy ending. Entitlement is a profound, sober novel that I found thought provoking and interesting.
Cate's obsession with her brother's disappearance has had a detrimental affect on every facet of her life. While I was sympathetic to her overwhelming sense of loss, I found her largely selfish, cold and bitter. Her lack of empathy for others, particularly her mother, is disturbing, though perhaps is more understandable in terms of her relationship with her father. Only the glimpses of Cate as a child and teen showing her close bond with her brother offer some sense of redemption, yet even then, there is a subtle current of self centeredness in their relationship. I found I grew increasingly frustrated by Cate failure to acknowledge her own contribution to the dysfunctional family dynamics.
The relationships within this family are central to this story. Cate's father, Blake, is almost wholly unlikeable. Though I did feel some pity for him because of his current physical pain, I was appalled by his racism and his attitude towards his daughter. Nora, Cate's mother, seems weak in the face of the behaviour of her husband and daughter. Elliot largely remains an enigma through out the novel with only Cate's memories giving him life. He has been missing eight years when the novel begins, simply walking away one morning with no further trace. What specifically kept me reading Entitlement was my desire to know Eliot's fate and I found I developed several theories as to why Eliot would disappear as the novel progressed.
Loss is the major theme of Entitlement explored not only within the McConville family, but also within the indigenous mob that lives on the fringes of the family property. Mellor, the McConville family's longtime farmhand, has a family history defined by loss, from the loss of his tribe's native land and culture to the forcible removal of aboriginal children from their parents. This element is a significant aspect of the story.
Told in the third person, at times I found the way the narrative segues from the present to memory with little warning disconcerting. The pace of the novel is measured yet White skillfully sustains the suspense throughout the story, despite the lack of urgency in the plot. I thought the tone stylish with evocative descriptions of the Australian landscape and it's people.
Though there is closure for the McConvilles's, and Mellor's mob, there is no happy ending. Entitlement is a profound, sober novel that I found thought provoking and interesting.
April 10, 2016
An engrossing story of the lives of two families, European and Indigenous, on a farm in rural Australia. White takes on big themes - the slow disintegration of the squattocracy and their once prosperous properties and the historical dispossession and appalling treatment of the indigenous people living on the fringes of the towns and farms.
Entitlement kept me turning pages but there were times when the underlying indigenous themes seemed to be delivered in lecture-mode rather than unfolding as part of the story.
As well as the European/Indigenous divide White skilfully explores the generational divide, which I suspect may not be uncommon among rural families, where the older generation has trouble understanding the full extent of Aboriginal pain and suffering, and difficulty coming to terms with the slow demise of the family farm. The morally vain younger generation may see their parents (and ancestors) as racists and blame them for mismanaging the land.
It's risky taking on an Aboriginal voice when you're European - riskier, I think, than male writing as female, adult writing as child and so on - because its so easy, in today's climate, to offend or simply not pull it off. White, however, manages this with aplomb. All power to her.
I look forward to future books from this author. In particular I'm looking forward to her soon-to-be-published memoir.
March 23, 2016
An easy to read story about Cate who goes back to the family farm to confront her family she left 8 years previously and her memories of her brother who has not been seen for 5 years.
I liked better the parallel story line of the aboriginal family who also live on the property and have been long time employees on the family farm. Their story is of lives and lands lost and the frustrations with native titles, apologies, racism and the stolen generation. Their sorrows make Cate look petulant, although she comes through at the end.
I liked better the parallel story line of the aboriginal family who also live on the property and have been long time employees on the family farm. Their story is of lives and lands lost and the frustrations with native titles, apologies, racism and the stolen generation. Their sorrows make Cate look petulant, although she comes through at the end.
abandoned
July 29, 2012I gave up at page 26. Not my kind of book so it's not fair to comment on it.
Read
January 2, 2013Slow to get into
August 30, 2013
Really liked this, even better than her previous book which I really liked. A shame about the cover which I think categorises it with a lot of other (airport)books; it's so much better than that.
September 28, 2016
I couldn't get into the characters in this one. I didn't feel like I really understood their motivations.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews