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Else
Leisl and her daughter Else have their own language exchanging facts 'like a frontier trade'. As the country is reclaimed by rains they escape the city, returning to their family home on a distant peninsula. Seasons become extreme. Else adapts, thriving in the wet and warming world. In Else, Leisl sees herself her father, his mother as the past becomes present, and present: past. But flash floods are followed by more weather events, and the pair are forced further and further down the 'Ninch'.
A novel about belonging, Else imagines a possible future in the story of one family and lyrical, evocative prose.
A novel about belonging, Else imagines a possible future in the story of one family and lyrical, evocative prose.
277 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2025
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 10, 2025
Else is a work of experimental fiction in the speculative fiction space, and at first I wasn't sure who its readership might be. It's dystopian climate-change fiction, set in a very near future, on very expensive Mornington Peninsula real estate that is not far from where I live. I thought the novel's readership wouldn't include me, but I was wrong about that. #NeverSayNever!
The family tree that is inserted on page 82 tells the reader that Leisl, born in 1965, gives birth to her daughter Else in 2010. So she's an older mother when she begins to share her life with a neuro-divergent child, progressing from self-blame and a search for answers, to acceptance...though we see that — just once — she wishes that Else weren't quite so different. She's not exactly demanding, but she makes it impossible for Liesl to have any other kind of life in the urban setting from which they had fled.
This capacity to adapt to Else's neuro-divergence serves them well in a novel that explores adaptation to climate change and adaptation to a lifestyle based on a constant search for safe ground and a diet based on foraging. (And 'liberating' (i.e. looting) supplies from abandoned houses).
Though the novel, as it progresses, merges past and present with fragments of back stories about her parents and grandparents and other ancestors going back as far as Louisa in 1790, the reader learns nothing about Liesl's life before Else... because it's not important. What matters is the alarming present where these two flee rising flood waters for a derelict family home on the 'Ninch', (local slang for the Mornington Peninsula).
The dialogue is an experiment in contrasts that serves to illustrate the theme of adaptation. Liesl, who was reading Latin at the age of four (a credible achievement because Latin is phonetic) is a walking encyclopaedia of information about the environment. Her interactions with Else are most often about animal, bird and insect life and their ecology now so fundamentally disturbed. Else, OTOH, in brief staccato responses mutters and hums, mimics and stims. Her ingenious word play reminded me of the way Patrick White forces his readers to pause, focus on a word that seems missing or out of place, but isn't.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/11/10/e...
The family tree that is inserted on page 82 tells the reader that Leisl, born in 1965, gives birth to her daughter Else in 2010. So she's an older mother when she begins to share her life with a neuro-divergent child, progressing from self-blame and a search for answers, to acceptance...though we see that — just once — she wishes that Else weren't quite so different. She's not exactly demanding, but she makes it impossible for Liesl to have any other kind of life in the urban setting from which they had fled.
This capacity to adapt to Else's neuro-divergence serves them well in a novel that explores adaptation to climate change and adaptation to a lifestyle based on a constant search for safe ground and a diet based on foraging. (And 'liberating' (i.e. looting) supplies from abandoned houses).
Liesl — for the first time? — listens. Unwrapping the sarong she's woven around her head. Her face — blistered by wind and salt, battered by rocks — is beginning to scab and scale. She seems...something like, and yet not like: her old self. (p.150)
Though the novel, as it progresses, merges past and present with fragments of back stories about her parents and grandparents and other ancestors going back as far as Louisa in 1790, the reader learns nothing about Liesl's life before Else... because it's not important. What matters is the alarming present where these two flee rising flood waters for a derelict family home on the 'Ninch', (local slang for the Mornington Peninsula).
The dialogue is an experiment in contrasts that serves to illustrate the theme of adaptation. Liesl, who was reading Latin at the age of four (a credible achievement because Latin is phonetic) is a walking encyclopaedia of information about the environment. Her interactions with Else are most often about animal, bird and insect life and their ecology now so fundamentally disturbed. Else, OTOH, in brief staccato responses mutters and hums, mimics and stims. Her ingenious word play reminded me of the way Patrick White forces his readers to pause, focus on a word that seems missing or out of place, but isn't.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/11/10/e...
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