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Sorry
The birth of a daughter in the Australian outback pushes the parents to the edges of sanity. Vivid psychological family drama, expertly crafted by the author Dreams of Speaking
250 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
15 people are currently reading
360 people want to read
About the author
Gail Jones
40 books137 followersGail Jones is the author of two short-story collections, a critical monograph, and the novels BLACK MIRROR, SIXTY LIGHTS, DREAMS OF SPEAKING, SORRY and FIVE BELLS.
Three times shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, her prizes include the WA Premier's Award for Fiction, the Nita B. Kibble Award, the Steele Rudd Award, the Age Book of the Year Award, the Adelaide Festival Award for Fiction and the ASAL Gold Medal. She has also been shortlisted for international awards, including the IMPAC and the Prix Femina.
Her fiction has been translated into nine languages. Gail has recently taken up a Professorship at UWS.
Three times shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, her prizes include the WA Premier's Award for Fiction, the Nita B. Kibble Award, the Steele Rudd Award, the Age Book of the Year Award, the Adelaide Festival Award for Fiction and the ASAL Gold Medal. She has also been shortlisted for international awards, including the IMPAC and the Prix Femina.
Her fiction has been translated into nine languages. Gail has recently taken up a Professorship at UWS.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 109 reviews
February 7, 2023
A touching, interesting, tragic, sad novel set mainly in Broome, north Western Australia during the 1930s and 1940s. The main character is Perdita, who tells the story of her childhood in the Australian wilderness. Her parents, Nicholas and Stella, are British emigrants. Nicholas, an archeologist, secretly has sex with aboriginal women. Stella, oblivious to her husband’s adultery, becomes depressed, being hospitalized on more than one occasion. Stella is a Shakespeare enthusiast. Stella teaches Perdita to recite Shakespeare lines.
Perdita becomes very good friends with Mary, an aboriginal teenager from an orphanage. They share in their love of reading. This bond ends abruptly when Nicholas is brutally stabbed to death.
Perdita learns from Mary about the language of the body, a physical closeness she does not encounter at home. After the trauma of seeing her father’s dead body, Perdita develops a stutter that is only disappears when she recites Shakespeare.
I found this book to be an engaging reading experience with a number of interesting, well developed characters.
This book was shortlisted for the 2008 Miles Franklin award.
Perdita becomes very good friends with Mary, an aboriginal teenager from an orphanage. They share in their love of reading. This bond ends abruptly when Nicholas is brutally stabbed to death.
Perdita learns from Mary about the language of the body, a physical closeness she does not encounter at home. After the trauma of seeing her father’s dead body, Perdita develops a stutter that is only disappears when she recites Shakespeare.
I found this book to be an engaging reading experience with a number of interesting, well developed characters.
This book was shortlisted for the 2008 Miles Franklin award.
December 11, 2020
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is rare, in my experience, to find an author with such word/language craft who, yet, can deliver a comfortable style that is easy and enjoyable to read. The story centres on the friendship of three children, Perdita, Mary and Billy, who are respectively handicapped by dysfunctional parents, race, and physical affliction. It's an all-too-familiar sad story, but there are uplifting elements of love and friendship, and the incredible generosity and humanity of the few (VeraTrevor, Flora and Ted , Dr Oblov) who rise above the cruelty to and dismissiveness of the less fortunate and "different" by society at large. I am convinced, by this book, to read more by Gail Jones.
June 14, 2016
Sorry
Age group: This book is ideal for young adults to elders (13+) There are also graphic themes (involving rape scenes) that may make some readers quite uncomfortable.
Synopsis: Sorry is an enigmatic, non-linear story which follows the twisted and wretched story about a deep-thinking girl: Perdita.
Set in the outback of Western Australia during World War Two, an English couple come over to Broome for Nicolas’ work (anthropology). Stella and Nicolas raise their isolated child, Perdita and Stella’s world crumbles into something so embittering and nihilistic. In this world of isolation, Perdita finds love in an Aboriginal girl, Mary and a deaf boy, Billy.
Perdita’s life is shattered and her life becomes brokenly entwined with her stutter. Will she ever become whole once again and piece back together her desolated life? Or will one sacrifice tear everyone apart?
Author: Gail Jones
Genre:Coming of Age, Mystery (?)
Light or Heavy: It is a light book (214 pages) however it may take some people quite a long time to read due to the difficult but vivid language, and to try to assimilate the context of the book.
Why am I reading it? It is our class novel this year.
Gail Jones’ style is postmodern and this may make the book confusing to some readers. This book is set in a non-chronological order, fixed with loops in time and a change of tense. (First person, second and third.) During the first few chapters, I found this style of writing quite confusing and hard to read, however, after a bit, I understood how it worked and actually made the story more interesting and enjoyable to read. I liked finding out bits and pieces of the story as I read along, not knowing the whole puzzle until the very end.
One thing I strongly disliked about the story was how it dragged on and on. Although knowing about everyone’s future was nice and insightful; I found myself urging for the ending to be near; for the last page to be the next one. I understand that maximalism is part of Gail Jones’ style (this is the use of lengthy, highly detailed, vivid language and disorganised writing), however it was too lengthy. The ending wasn’t intriguing and I think that chapter twenty-three could be cut out completely; this way the book could have ended with “I should have said sorry to my sister, Mary. Sorry, my sister, oh my sister, sorry.” (Which ties in with the title perfectly.) If it had been written this way, the book would have ended in an enthralled sweep of sadness, a much more heart-trembling way.
Sorry is an excellently written book, aiming to extend your vocabulary, has distinctive and interesting characters, lengthy but highly descriptive writing (which is unnecessary at times), focuses on real political events (the war, rape, abuse, loneliness), has many hidden symbols (like Perdita’s acute stutter and how it intertwines with the book) and is elegantly written.
If you are looking for a factual read, with vivid writing that isn’t exactly a page turner then Sorry is good for you!
By Izzy Rigda
Age group: This book is ideal for young adults to elders (13+) There are also graphic themes (involving rape scenes) that may make some readers quite uncomfortable.
Synopsis: Sorry is an enigmatic, non-linear story which follows the twisted and wretched story about a deep-thinking girl: Perdita.
Set in the outback of Western Australia during World War Two, an English couple come over to Broome for Nicolas’ work (anthropology). Stella and Nicolas raise their isolated child, Perdita and Stella’s world crumbles into something so embittering and nihilistic. In this world of isolation, Perdita finds love in an Aboriginal girl, Mary and a deaf boy, Billy.
Perdita’s life is shattered and her life becomes brokenly entwined with her stutter. Will she ever become whole once again and piece back together her desolated life? Or will one sacrifice tear everyone apart?
Author: Gail Jones
Genre:Coming of Age, Mystery (?)
Light or Heavy: It is a light book (214 pages) however it may take some people quite a long time to read due to the difficult but vivid language, and to try to assimilate the context of the book.
Why am I reading it? It is our class novel this year.
Gail Jones’ style is postmodern and this may make the book confusing to some readers. This book is set in a non-chronological order, fixed with loops in time and a change of tense. (First person, second and third.) During the first few chapters, I found this style of writing quite confusing and hard to read, however, after a bit, I understood how it worked and actually made the story more interesting and enjoyable to read. I liked finding out bits and pieces of the story as I read along, not knowing the whole puzzle until the very end.
One thing I strongly disliked about the story was how it dragged on and on. Although knowing about everyone’s future was nice and insightful; I found myself urging for the ending to be near; for the last page to be the next one. I understand that maximalism is part of Gail Jones’ style (this is the use of lengthy, highly detailed, vivid language and disorganised writing), however it was too lengthy. The ending wasn’t intriguing and I think that chapter twenty-three could be cut out completely; this way the book could have ended with “I should have said sorry to my sister, Mary. Sorry, my sister, oh my sister, sorry.” (Which ties in with the title perfectly.) If it had been written this way, the book would have ended in an enthralled sweep of sadness, a much more heart-trembling way.
Sorry is an excellently written book, aiming to extend your vocabulary, has distinctive and interesting characters, lengthy but highly descriptive writing (which is unnecessary at times), focuses on real political events (the war, rape, abuse, loneliness), has many hidden symbols (like Perdita’s acute stutter and how it intertwines with the book) and is elegantly written.
If you are looking for a factual read, with vivid writing that isn’t exactly a page turner then Sorry is good for you!
By Izzy Rigda
September 9, 2014
Gail Jones’s novel Sorry paints a vivid picture, in lyrical prose, of the often sorry (!) lives of Nicholas and Stella Keene and their daughter, Perdita who came from England in 1930 to live in a remote corner of Western Australia. The main action of the novel takes place during and after the Second World War and is told from two perspectives, in the first person by the adult Perdita and in the third person, a narrative technique which enables the author to illuminate events and emotions from within and without.
Sorry begins with the murder of the anthropologist, Nicholas Keene, who comes to Australia with grand ideas of writing a definitive work on the culture of Australian aborigines, but soon loses interest in his project. The authorities turn out to be very little help, impressing on him the fact that there have been ‘disturbances’ and ‘casualties’ and hoping that if he can provide them with an insight into the workings of the Aboriginal mind, it will be easier to control them. Nicholas has the same superior attitude displayed by so many of his generation and makes no real attempt to get to know or to understand the culture of the Aboriginal people in the area and so becomes morose and dissatisfied as his great work never materialises.
Although the murder has just occurred as the novel opens, it is unclear who the culprit is and the reader is left guessing almost until the end, even though the author hints at possibilities. Was it his unhappy and unstable wife, Stella, his equally unhappy and neglected daughter, Perdita, or Billy, the deaf-mute son of the neighbours, or perhaps Mary, the Aboriginal help and Perdita’s declared sister – or is he possibly another casualty of the disturbances the authorities had warned him about? One thing the reader can be fairly sure of, however, is that Mary, who was immediately arrested (after all, you can never trust an aborigine), was not the murderer, even though she never denied the accusation, presumably in order to protect the real murderer. When, towards the end of the novel, the truth comes out, the murderer fails to say ‘sorry’ to Mary for the years she has spent in detention and then in jail until it is too late. This is an individual example of the much larger failure of White Australia to apologise to the Aboriginal people for the years and years of maltreatment, violence – symbolised here by Nicholas’s repeated raping of Mary – for taking their children from them and moving them to cities hundreds, even thousands of miles away to ‘get an education’ their families were considered incapable of giving them, for stealing their land without any compensation. On a positive note, in 2008, several years after the novel was published, the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, finally did say ‘sorry’ for all the wrongs that had been committed.
The loneliness of life in a shack in the Outback has a disastrous effect on Stella who had never wanted to go to Australia and whose only wish is to return to England. She escapes from daily life by immersing herself in books and quoting at length and from memory from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets while, Ophelia-like, becoming madder and madder, having to be institutionalised on several occasions. The Keenes’ daughter, Perdita (significantly meaning ‘the lost one’ and named after a character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest) is the unwanted, unloved child of a loveless marriage who is mostly left to her own devises and whose education is comprised of little else than Shakespeare and the knowledge she gains herself from the mountains of books which line their shack.
Perdita drifts often aimlessly about with her dog, Horatio, who accompanies her as faithfully as his namesake accompanied Hamlet in the eponymous play, and the only two human beings she has formed a bond with – Billy and Mary. They are three outsiders in a hostile environment. Here the importance of language, of communicating through speech, being able to articulate feelings, is illustrated conversely by the inability of the main characters to do just that. Perdita starts to stammer so badly after her father’s murder that she rarely speaks at all and cannot be understood when she does try: “She was just a stuttering girl in a faded cotton frock … with too much time on her hands … Now that her childhood was a spoiled thing, compounded by an inefficient tongue and garbled speech, Perdita entered the dreary territory of the truly alone”. Stella can only voice her feelings with the Bard’s help – an appropriate quote for every occasion. Deaf-mute Billy is given to flapping his hands in anguish as he can’t express himself any other way. Stella, too, in her madness, also eventually stops speaking altogether. Ironically it is only Mary – and not the white people – who is articulate, but whose real voice, standing symbolically for all Aboriginal Australians, is not heard or understood by White Australia.
The violence that affects the characters in Australia is mirrored by the violence of the war in Europe, constantly present in their lives as Nicholas obsessively covers the walls with newspaper cuttings and photos. The fact that he had been invalided out of the army during the First World War as he had been seriously wounded and still has shrapnel in his back and therefore was not given a commission in the Second World War rankles an already deeply dissatisfied and angry man. When the family is to be evacuated to Perth as a Japanese invasion appears imminent, the violence of this war touches Perdita’s life as she witnesses the Japanese bombing of Dutch refugee ships in Broome harbour, a scene which returns to haunt her again and again.
Although this is, for the most part, a depressing and bleak book, there are small rays of light and hope. As a young adult Perdita, with the help of a kind and perspicacious Russian psychiatrist, overcomes her stammer; Billy becomes a very adept mechanic, learns sign language, which revolutionises his world, and marries his sign language teacher. Their twin daughters happily have none of the communication problems of their parents and can live in both worlds: “Neither was deaf ...[they] fluctuated with ease between the worlds of verbal expression and sign. With their parents they practised a second body, holding up their fingers, enlarging their physical vocabularies; with [Pertdita] they loved sing-song, pun, narrative and rhyme. How their little mouths chattered.” They have the best of both worlds, so at least the second generation is not going to suffer the deprivations and loneliness of the parents.
Gail Jones has written a deeply insightful book with believable characters in eloquent and elegant prose for even the most horrifying scenes. In spite of the violence that disrupts and changes the lives of the characters and the parallel violence of the Second World War, the novel ends on a conciliatory note as Perdita considers her life: “What remains is broken as my speech once was. But I see now what my tongue-tied misery could not: the shape that affections make, the patterns that love upholds in the face of any shattering. It is not sentimentality that drives me to claim this, but the need – more explicitly self-serving, perhaps – to imagine something venerable and illustrious beneath such waste.”
Sorry begins with the murder of the anthropologist, Nicholas Keene, who comes to Australia with grand ideas of writing a definitive work on the culture of Australian aborigines, but soon loses interest in his project. The authorities turn out to be very little help, impressing on him the fact that there have been ‘disturbances’ and ‘casualties’ and hoping that if he can provide them with an insight into the workings of the Aboriginal mind, it will be easier to control them. Nicholas has the same superior attitude displayed by so many of his generation and makes no real attempt to get to know or to understand the culture of the Aboriginal people in the area and so becomes morose and dissatisfied as his great work never materialises.
Although the murder has just occurred as the novel opens, it is unclear who the culprit is and the reader is left guessing almost until the end, even though the author hints at possibilities. Was it his unhappy and unstable wife, Stella, his equally unhappy and neglected daughter, Perdita, or Billy, the deaf-mute son of the neighbours, or perhaps Mary, the Aboriginal help and Perdita’s declared sister – or is he possibly another casualty of the disturbances the authorities had warned him about? One thing the reader can be fairly sure of, however, is that Mary, who was immediately arrested (after all, you can never trust an aborigine), was not the murderer, even though she never denied the accusation, presumably in order to protect the real murderer. When, towards the end of the novel, the truth comes out, the murderer fails to say ‘sorry’ to Mary for the years she has spent in detention and then in jail until it is too late. This is an individual example of the much larger failure of White Australia to apologise to the Aboriginal people for the years and years of maltreatment, violence – symbolised here by Nicholas’s repeated raping of Mary – for taking their children from them and moving them to cities hundreds, even thousands of miles away to ‘get an education’ their families were considered incapable of giving them, for stealing their land without any compensation. On a positive note, in 2008, several years after the novel was published, the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, finally did say ‘sorry’ for all the wrongs that had been committed.
The loneliness of life in a shack in the Outback has a disastrous effect on Stella who had never wanted to go to Australia and whose only wish is to return to England. She escapes from daily life by immersing herself in books and quoting at length and from memory from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets while, Ophelia-like, becoming madder and madder, having to be institutionalised on several occasions. The Keenes’ daughter, Perdita (significantly meaning ‘the lost one’ and named after a character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest) is the unwanted, unloved child of a loveless marriage who is mostly left to her own devises and whose education is comprised of little else than Shakespeare and the knowledge she gains herself from the mountains of books which line their shack.
Perdita drifts often aimlessly about with her dog, Horatio, who accompanies her as faithfully as his namesake accompanied Hamlet in the eponymous play, and the only two human beings she has formed a bond with – Billy and Mary. They are three outsiders in a hostile environment. Here the importance of language, of communicating through speech, being able to articulate feelings, is illustrated conversely by the inability of the main characters to do just that. Perdita starts to stammer so badly after her father’s murder that she rarely speaks at all and cannot be understood when she does try: “She was just a stuttering girl in a faded cotton frock … with too much time on her hands … Now that her childhood was a spoiled thing, compounded by an inefficient tongue and garbled speech, Perdita entered the dreary territory of the truly alone”. Stella can only voice her feelings with the Bard’s help – an appropriate quote for every occasion. Deaf-mute Billy is given to flapping his hands in anguish as he can’t express himself any other way. Stella, too, in her madness, also eventually stops speaking altogether. Ironically it is only Mary – and not the white people – who is articulate, but whose real voice, standing symbolically for all Aboriginal Australians, is not heard or understood by White Australia.
The violence that affects the characters in Australia is mirrored by the violence of the war in Europe, constantly present in their lives as Nicholas obsessively covers the walls with newspaper cuttings and photos. The fact that he had been invalided out of the army during the First World War as he had been seriously wounded and still has shrapnel in his back and therefore was not given a commission in the Second World War rankles an already deeply dissatisfied and angry man. When the family is to be evacuated to Perth as a Japanese invasion appears imminent, the violence of this war touches Perdita’s life as she witnesses the Japanese bombing of Dutch refugee ships in Broome harbour, a scene which returns to haunt her again and again.
Although this is, for the most part, a depressing and bleak book, there are small rays of light and hope. As a young adult Perdita, with the help of a kind and perspicacious Russian psychiatrist, overcomes her stammer; Billy becomes a very adept mechanic, learns sign language, which revolutionises his world, and marries his sign language teacher. Their twin daughters happily have none of the communication problems of their parents and can live in both worlds: “Neither was deaf ...[they] fluctuated with ease between the worlds of verbal expression and sign. With their parents they practised a second body, holding up their fingers, enlarging their physical vocabularies; with [Pertdita] they loved sing-song, pun, narrative and rhyme. How their little mouths chattered.” They have the best of both worlds, so at least the second generation is not going to suffer the deprivations and loneliness of the parents.
Gail Jones has written a deeply insightful book with believable characters in eloquent and elegant prose for even the most horrifying scenes. In spite of the violence that disrupts and changes the lives of the characters and the parallel violence of the Second World War, the novel ends on a conciliatory note as Perdita considers her life: “What remains is broken as my speech once was. But I see now what my tongue-tied misery could not: the shape that affections make, the patterns that love upholds in the face of any shattering. It is not sentimentality that drives me to claim this, but the need – more explicitly self-serving, perhaps – to imagine something venerable and illustrious beneath such waste.”
December 16, 2017
A beautifully written, sad and tragic story.
December 28, 2013
A beautifully-written story of loss, love and hope.
September 21, 2018
Reading for Litsy Markup Postal Book Club (#LMPBC) Round 3 - Group P.
http://www.SignUpGenius.com/go/508044...
To you be perfectly honest, I did not like this book when I started it. To quote one of my fellow #LMPBC Group P readers, it was “raw“. It wasn’t until well into the book (maybe 50% in) that I became fascinated with the story itself and with learning about the indigenous people of Australia. There is a lot going on in the story — snakes, Shakespeare, religion/spirituality, abuse, mental illness, murder, dysfunctional families, and so much more. I now think it was well worth the read but I think I would hesitate to recommend it to anyone because it was so sad and, yes “raw”.
http://www.SignUpGenius.com/go/508044...
To you be perfectly honest, I did not like this book when I started it. To quote one of my fellow #LMPBC Group P readers, it was “raw“. It wasn’t until well into the book (maybe 50% in) that I became fascinated with the story itself and with learning about the indigenous people of Australia. There is a lot going on in the story — snakes, Shakespeare, religion/spirituality, abuse, mental illness, murder, dysfunctional families, and so much more. I now think it was well worth the read but I think I would hesitate to recommend it to anyone because it was so sad and, yes “raw”.
August 11, 2024
I had a lot of trouble at the start of this book. It got better towards the end but I had to get through about 2/3rds of the book before I felt like I was getting somewhere.
September 11, 2019
Beautifully written, this poignant story of loss and survival is well worth a read. Jones creates believable characters and her portrayal of the Aboriginal characters and Broom ring true.
May 24, 2025
Published in 2007, this is an earlier book. The author’s style is so compelling. Beautiful writing, getting deep into things like language, meaning, trauma of many kinds. It’s set largely around Broome, with the Second World War in the background. Perdita is such a fabulous character, her situation is unique. She’s alone in so many ways. It’s a heartbreaking read by the end.
October 26, 2025
This book was so terrible, it made me want to light a bonfire and use it as kindling. But, as an actual Australian, I'm pretty sure that's illegal, much like everything that happens to Mary in this novel.
I tried to go into this with an open mind. Having a pretty dense education on the Stolen Generations, I knew there was still much to be learnt, especially considering my own great-grandparents were once in the place of Mary as Aboriginal Australians. However, the white savior narrative and sensationalization of the abuse Indigenous women faced left an absolutely foul taste in my mouth. In fact, I think I threw up a little.
This book is almost cartoonishly full of stock characters and tropes. African-American director Spike Lee coined the trope, "Magical Black" (please do your own research, the actual trope I will not write out because it contains the n-word) which is a modern adaptation of the age-old "Noble Savage" trope that even Rousseau wrote about (and I know you know Rousseau, Gail Jones, you little plagiariser!). The two tropes denote characters, primarily of African or Indigenous descent, who aid the white character in their Transgressive Whimsical Spiritual Journey, and are largely uncorrupted by white civilization - they are inherently good, smart, wise and superior in knowledge and maturity to the white protagonist, offering a sort of mentorship - yet they have no past, no spotlight and no self of their own. They simply exist to help the naive, uneducated white protagonist open their third eye and realize the burdens of white society or whatever.
Now while I do prefer this portrayal over, "insane cannibalistic uncivilised savage" which is pure Nazi logic, it's not exactly the most flattering depiction ever. It results in, in Sorry's case, the Aboriginal Australian girl, Mary, being caricaturized and placed on a pedestal, turned into this (quite LITERALLY) selfless, willing, passive angel who sacrifices herself so the white girl, Perdita, isn't placed into foster care and freed from her psychotic, white supremacist family. Sure, I guess this is a realistic mirroring of how deeply racist, White Australia functioned in the war era, but the criticism only somewhat holds up because despite the story primarily aiming to "tell the untold story of Indigenous Australians"...it never does. It's all about boring, stuttering P-P-P-Perdita who can't get over her white guilt and shame for...protecting her friend against a brutal rape??
(Said rape made me sick to the stomach. While it is not really needlessly detailed, it is still exploitative of the actual rape Indigenous women suffered through. Yes, depict rape in your novel. Yes, talk about it. Yes, make audiences disturbed. Yes, critique how those Indigenous women were then stripped of their voice. But all I ask is one, just one sentence, from the survivor's perspective and own mouth, about how she felt about her rape. I'm not saying it needs to be All About Victimhood, but including semi-graphic rape scenes, and then giving zero closure (not even a sentence or thought!) about it, is incredibly fraudulent and unethical and honestly, furthers isolates real-life victims).
Arguably, Perdita is the flesh embodiment of White Australia - essentially, half-assed, centrist White Female allyship incarnate! However, there's something to be said about how Jones decides to portray White Australia not as a grown adult who knows what's happening and refuses to speak up out of cowardice...but as a traumatized, abused girl-child who physically cannot speak. This is less about how Jones attempts to villainise Perdita for no reason (while Nicholas and Stella, Perdita's white, abusive and neglectful settler parents, mostly get away scot-free) but more so about how Jones believes White Australia was this ignorant, confused, young country who lost their voice through trauma, and not a purposefully cruel, racist, genocidal state that destroyed Aboriginal Australian communities.
The use of intertextuality was convoluted, gratuitous, and lazy. For a story that's supposedly offering a critique of white literature - Conrad, Shakespeare, du Maurier - it sure did like to use them as a way to explain what's happening, because heaven knows Jones certainly couldn't! I am a big fan and disciple of purple prose, so the flowery writing style itself wasn't a massive issue - it was the random insertions of irrelevant Shakespearean verses - clearly just Jones meat-riding her fave bard - which were the issue. They were misplaced, completely unrelated to the topic at hand and then, in the following paragraph, were always related back to the story. I will give Jones credit for this - while most writers don't include explanations or exposition for their prose, because it is actually legible and comprehendible, I think Jones knew audiences would stare at the awkward Othello quote and be like, "Wtf?", so she included the little reasoning down below. Very thoughtful of you, Ol' Gail. But I must say most quotes were very predictable. Quoting Macbeth, a story of murder, guilt and revenge, when Perdita turns her father into a pincushion...how original.
I could talk for hours about how strange this novel is - how, in its endeavor to platform the silenced voices of Aboriginal Australian women, it actually tells them "you guys are goddess-saints who do no wrong!! You're basically not even human!! Haha...what's that? A personality? Oh, guess I better add one throwaway sentence about how you DO have autonomy and a life outside of whiteness...I guess..." - but that would take me longer than it did to finish this centrist, white-slop of a novel. If you so desperately want to become the Toni Morrison of Australia, start by actually listening to Aboriginal Australians, even if it makes you uncomfortable to hear how you, as a White Australian, are inherently complicit in the subjugation of Indigenous Australians. Start by doing your research on the background of Australian Gothic and Noir - how, much like the American Southern Gothic, it was borne from the bloodshed of white colonial violence and racial apartheid. Start by taking one long, hard look at your Mayonnaise Marauder self in the mirror and realize that not everything should be about YOU - especially in a novel intended to shed light on Indigenous voices.
To anyone thinking of reading the novel: don't waste your time, energy and money. If you want a book that contains themes of memory, intergenerational trauma, Gothic elements, racial trauma and commentary on segregation, slavery, genocide and racism...read Beloved.
Abigail Williams (yes, from Salem) out.
I tried to go into this with an open mind. Having a pretty dense education on the Stolen Generations, I knew there was still much to be learnt, especially considering my own great-grandparents were once in the place of Mary as Aboriginal Australians. However, the white savior narrative and sensationalization of the abuse Indigenous women faced left an absolutely foul taste in my mouth. In fact, I think I threw up a little.
This book is almost cartoonishly full of stock characters and tropes. African-American director Spike Lee coined the trope, "Magical Black" (please do your own research, the actual trope I will not write out because it contains the n-word) which is a modern adaptation of the age-old "Noble Savage" trope that even Rousseau wrote about (and I know you know Rousseau, Gail Jones, you little plagiariser!). The two tropes denote characters, primarily of African or Indigenous descent, who aid the white character in their Transgressive Whimsical Spiritual Journey, and are largely uncorrupted by white civilization - they are inherently good, smart, wise and superior in knowledge and maturity to the white protagonist, offering a sort of mentorship - yet they have no past, no spotlight and no self of their own. They simply exist to help the naive, uneducated white protagonist open their third eye and realize the burdens of white society or whatever.
Now while I do prefer this portrayal over, "insane cannibalistic uncivilised savage" which is pure Nazi logic, it's not exactly the most flattering depiction ever. It results in, in Sorry's case, the Aboriginal Australian girl, Mary, being caricaturized and placed on a pedestal, turned into this (quite LITERALLY) selfless, willing, passive angel who sacrifices herself so the white girl, Perdita, isn't placed into foster care and freed from her psychotic, white supremacist family. Sure, I guess this is a realistic mirroring of how deeply racist, White Australia functioned in the war era, but the criticism only somewhat holds up because despite the story primarily aiming to "tell the untold story of Indigenous Australians"...it never does. It's all about boring, stuttering P-P-P-Perdita who can't get over her white guilt and shame for...protecting her friend against a brutal rape??
(Said rape made me sick to the stomach. While it is not really needlessly detailed, it is still exploitative of the actual rape Indigenous women suffered through. Yes, depict rape in your novel. Yes, talk about it. Yes, make audiences disturbed. Yes, critique how those Indigenous women were then stripped of their voice. But all I ask is one, just one sentence, from the survivor's perspective and own mouth, about how she felt about her rape. I'm not saying it needs to be All About Victimhood, but including semi-graphic rape scenes, and then giving zero closure (not even a sentence or thought!) about it, is incredibly fraudulent and unethical and honestly, furthers isolates real-life victims).
Arguably, Perdita is the flesh embodiment of White Australia - essentially, half-assed, centrist White Female allyship incarnate! However, there's something to be said about how Jones decides to portray White Australia not as a grown adult who knows what's happening and refuses to speak up out of cowardice...but as a traumatized, abused girl-child who physically cannot speak. This is less about how Jones attempts to villainise Perdita for no reason (while Nicholas and Stella, Perdita's white, abusive and neglectful settler parents, mostly get away scot-free) but more so about how Jones believes White Australia was this ignorant, confused, young country who lost their voice through trauma, and not a purposefully cruel, racist, genocidal state that destroyed Aboriginal Australian communities.
The use of intertextuality was convoluted, gratuitous, and lazy. For a story that's supposedly offering a critique of white literature - Conrad, Shakespeare, du Maurier - it sure did like to use them as a way to explain what's happening, because heaven knows Jones certainly couldn't! I am a big fan and disciple of purple prose, so the flowery writing style itself wasn't a massive issue - it was the random insertions of irrelevant Shakespearean verses - clearly just Jones meat-riding her fave bard - which were the issue. They were misplaced, completely unrelated to the topic at hand and then, in the following paragraph, were always related back to the story. I will give Jones credit for this - while most writers don't include explanations or exposition for their prose, because it is actually legible and comprehendible, I think Jones knew audiences would stare at the awkward Othello quote and be like, "Wtf?", so she included the little reasoning down below. Very thoughtful of you, Ol' Gail. But I must say most quotes were very predictable. Quoting Macbeth, a story of murder, guilt and revenge, when Perdita turns her father into a pincushion...how original.
I could talk for hours about how strange this novel is - how, in its endeavor to platform the silenced voices of Aboriginal Australian women, it actually tells them "you guys are goddess-saints who do no wrong!! You're basically not even human!! Haha...what's that? A personality? Oh, guess I better add one throwaway sentence about how you DO have autonomy and a life outside of whiteness...I guess..." - but that would take me longer than it did to finish this centrist, white-slop of a novel. If you so desperately want to become the Toni Morrison of Australia, start by actually listening to Aboriginal Australians, even if it makes you uncomfortable to hear how you, as a White Australian, are inherently complicit in the subjugation of Indigenous Australians. Start by doing your research on the background of Australian Gothic and Noir - how, much like the American Southern Gothic, it was borne from the bloodshed of white colonial violence and racial apartheid. Start by taking one long, hard look at your Mayonnaise Marauder self in the mirror and realize that not everything should be about YOU - especially in a novel intended to shed light on Indigenous voices.
To anyone thinking of reading the novel: don't waste your time, energy and money. If you want a book that contains themes of memory, intergenerational trauma, Gothic elements, racial trauma and commentary on segregation, slavery, genocide and racism...read Beloved.
Abigail Williams (yes, from Salem) out.
August 21, 2016
This is actually the worst book I've ever come across in all my many years of reading. The characters were despicable and annoying, most of all the supposedly pitiful protagonist Perdita, and it was all in all a sordid, pretentious, overwritten book. Though each page the characters moaned on, and on, and on. It was an attempt at social reflection but remained bereft of meaningful ideas. It was too miserable and petty to even be realism -- unless the human condition is so base that we are less capable of anything noble than a beast.
It left me feeling angry each time I picked it up. The representation of the aboriginals as unambiguous, idealistic, child-like, and oh-so-pitiful creatures left a bitter taste in the mouth. They were shown as angelic, helpless victims more than as human beings, while all the white adults were the disgusting antithesis of this.
What is the point of reading anything? Reading can make a person feel happy or evoke a pleasurable melancholy, it can stimulate their thoughts, it can provide a new perspective on the world.
So, going off that criteria, I can safely say that Sorry was more than a waste of time, it was an overwhelmingly negative experience.
I'm actually tempted to flush it page by page down the toilet rather than hand it in to a second-hand bookshop for some poor soul to suffer through.
It left me feeling angry each time I picked it up. The representation of the aboriginals as unambiguous, idealistic, child-like, and oh-so-pitiful creatures left a bitter taste in the mouth. They were shown as angelic, helpless victims more than as human beings, while all the white adults were the disgusting antithesis of this.
What is the point of reading anything? Reading can make a person feel happy or evoke a pleasurable melancholy, it can stimulate their thoughts, it can provide a new perspective on the world.
So, going off that criteria, I can safely say that Sorry was more than a waste of time, it was an overwhelmingly negative experience.
I'm actually tempted to flush it page by page down the toilet rather than hand it in to a second-hand bookshop for some poor soul to suffer through.
December 11, 2008
One of the best books I've read this year. Set in the Australian outback with World War II as a major background, this is the story of young Perdita, born to a Shakespeare quoting and otherwise unreachable depressed mother, and a grim and distant father. Unschooled, or occasionally home-schooled in a scatter-shot fashion, Perdita buries herself in her father's books which are piled in stacks throughout their tiny shack. Her companions are a deaf-mute neighbor boy, an aboriginal girl educated in a convent and brought to care for her and her father while her mother is hospitalized, and her dog. The three children become even more closely linked by a terrible event which changes all their lives. Lyrical writing, the interesting character of Perdita (who is indeed a lost soul), the interesting relationships between the children serve to create a powerful and memorable book.
June 21, 2012
Hm.
Hmm.
I don't know.
This was a sad book and it made me feel even sadder than I've already been. Not the good kind of sadness, but the unhappy kind. The writing was beautiful. Gail Jones was able to describe things exquisitely with an economy of words. But that also backfired, as her brief descriptions of unpleasant things were incisive. (The placenta, ack!)
I actually liked the ending. Though I still didn't love them, I feel that was when we truly got to know the characters. Till then, they'd been little more than strangers.
I've been in a funk, I don't know what I really thought about this. I read it, and read it slowly; but I don't feel like I really read it. It didn't grab me. There were elements I could've loved, but I just didn't at all.
(Sarah - I would not advise using my silly review to determine whether or not you read this. So much for me saving you time. :P)
Hmm.
I don't know.
This was a sad book and it made me feel even sadder than I've already been. Not the good kind of sadness, but the unhappy kind. The writing was beautiful. Gail Jones was able to describe things exquisitely with an economy of words. But that also backfired, as her brief descriptions of unpleasant things were incisive. (The placenta, ack!)
I actually liked the ending. Though I still didn't love them, I feel that was when we truly got to know the characters. Till then, they'd been little more than strangers.
I've been in a funk, I don't know what I really thought about this. I read it, and read it slowly; but I don't feel like I really read it. It didn't grab me. There were elements I could've loved, but I just didn't at all.
(Sarah - I would not advise using my silly review to determine whether or not you read this. So much for me saving you time. :P)
June 22, 2016
Out of one book they make me read a term this one is the most confusing and possibly the most eye opening book. This book is made confusing by the use of circular time, it jumps between times in Perditas life. it also constantly changing perspective making it harder to follow.
anyway, this book follows Perdita and her self absorbed parents, all while being let in most barren reaches of Australia. Perdita an unwanted child being raised by unloving parents the only loving Perdita gets is from Mary. Mary is an aboriginal girl her dad brought home to take care of her.
This book for me was a task to read as it requires a high level of focus to be able to follow the many changing perspectives and changing times in Perdita life.
anyway, this book follows Perdita and her self absorbed parents, all while being let in most barren reaches of Australia. Perdita an unwanted child being raised by unloving parents the only loving Perdita gets is from Mary. Mary is an aboriginal girl her dad brought home to take care of her.
This book for me was a task to read as it requires a high level of focus to be able to follow the many changing perspectives and changing times in Perdita life.
March 12, 2016
A beautifully written story by author Gail Jones. Telling the story of a young, dysfunctional, troubled family and their life in Australia during WW2. At completion, the word 'sister' has a new meaning of loyalty and sacrifice. The title 'sorry' is understood in one of the final chapters. This novel tells the story of outback Western Australia during the mid 1900's and how lost opportunities and expectation and treatment of Indigenous Australians was a prevalent, eye opening and terrible reality.
April 3, 2009
I couldn't get through this one. there were parts where the writing was so beautiful. Passages I actually wanted to copy down...but the story has no climax, no build-up, when something big happens it's barely described.
July 31, 2016
An extraordinary book, beautifully written and highly recommended.
4.5 stars
4.5 stars
September 15, 2023
1.5/5
Zanudziła mnie okropnie
Zanudziła mnie okropnie
July 29, 2011
" “I have thought about it all my life, this moment of eclipse. It is perhaps because departures are complex, not simple, that we are tempted to cast them reductively, as if they were episodes in a novel, neat and emblematic. There is a relish which people speak of their childhoods, but also a shrewd suppression of moments of inversion, when what is deducted begins to define the experience. In the deepest folds of memory, the heaviest sediments, paradoxically, are those produced by loss. The convolutions of what we are include unrecongnised wanderings, pilgrimages, perhaps, back to these disappeared spaces, these obscurely, intangibly attractive sites. I wanted a “last glimpse” memory so that I could seal the shack, and the death, and my life with Mary, into an immured and sequestered past. To guard against what? To guard against haunting.” (129)
Gail Jones’ Sorry begins with a child of 10, Perdita, caught in whispers and held hands with her sister friend Mary. Perdita’s father lying in a pool of blood on the floor. Perdita remembering. The page is turned and the narrator begins again and the story of Perdita’s childhood begins again with the introduction of her parents: who they are, how they meet, and how they come to be the way they are with one another. Perdita is then born, an unwanted intrusion into already private and individually driven non-lives.
Perdita’s Englishman father Nicholas is an anthropologist who has visions of grandeur which shift circumstantially. Coming into this career late, a veteran of the first World War, looking for something adventurous and meaningful and away, he finds a job in Australia and is posted at a rural cattle station. By this time he is married to Perdita’s mother (who is not all that young either), a woman as quickly and equally disappointed with her marital choice as her husband. Stella moves inwardly, isolated from familiarity and family (sisters with whom she was close). She clings, as she always has, to Shakespeare. She is prone to mental breaks and general madness and is completely self-absorbed.
Perdita is raised (in part) by the Aborigine people assigned the cattle station run by the Trevors, the Mrs Flora Trevor taking the lonely girl somewhat in hand. The Trevors’ youngest son, Billy, a deaf-mute, becomes one of Perdita’s only friends. Mary comes into the story a little later. Where the three will become one skin of a family : Perdita, Mary’s sister. Billy, Perdita’s brother. Their friendship means everything to Perdita, and the story.
The Reader begins to notice how the narrator is working her way around remembering the event with which the novel begins. She sets up the characters and the circumstances in as linear a fashion as the setting down of memory can be, sometimes nervously darting around a particular age–10–and moving forward. The narrator admits to flights of fancy, of concrete imaginings to events to which she couldn’t possibly be present, and with some melodrama, but I never felt a necessity to question her reliability on the whole. She is an adult, looking back. She is thoughtful in her expressions, particular in story, working her way around and toward an important revelation.
Perdita doesn’t mean to forget. The Listener of her Story understands that what happened must have been horrible. There are bright and beautiful moments of Perdita’s childhood to bask in, but much of her life was lonely, abusive, scary, and in need of some form of restitution.'
[...]
"It is a painful part of the story of Perdita’s childhood where Perdita would find moments where she felt love and affection for a mother who less frequently found moments in which she was affectionate with her daughter. The feelings were in some way a reassurance, because she should have some love for her mother, shouldn’t she? But the blood stain could only reach so far before dilution and dissolution; but how far?
As Stella had found true familial love with her sisters, so too does Perdita find it with her sister Mary, the Aboriginal girl who comes to help care for Perdita while Stella is hospitalized. Their connection is swift and deeply held. It is important to understand how deeply held Perdita and Mary’s sisterhood is. It is important to understand the people from which Mary was wrought, the Aborigine. The native cultural traditions are portrayed in stark contrast to the colonizing forces. They are intelligent, graceful, hospitable, wise, merciful.
What Sorry shares about the Aboriginal culture is relevant to the story, even as it is informative. No thing about Sorry feels inconsequential. The frequent and effortless dispensing of large words is not to propel the novel into high flying literary circles or to showcase the author’s lexical intellect. The narrator is intent on the most precise image, the most illustrative word to carry the complex weight of her meaning. Stella would apply the right quote from a Shakespearean story in the right moment. The setting would enhance and project the right amount of gravity. The novel’s title deceptively simple–in light of ignorance–is incredibly complex, heavily-weighted in meaning and context.
In considering the title, it is remarkable how infrequently the word itself appears in the novel. Nicholas’ sense of entitlement would never consider the word. Stella is too self-absorbed and in needing of the word herself to use it with any sincerity; is there a Shakespearean form to suit the occasion? Perdita comes to learn what “sorry” means to the native culture in a peripheral sense; she doesn’t register in childhood what she would come to register in adulthood.
“That was the point, Perdita would realise much later, at which, in humility, she should have said “sorry.” She should have imagined what kind of imprisonment this was, to be closed against the rustle of leaves and the feel of wind and of rain, to be taken from her place, her own place, where her mother had died, to be sealed in the forgetfulness of someone else’s crime. Perdita should have been otherwise. She should have said “sorry.” (216)
The revelation that Perdita comes to at the end of Chapter 22 is incredibly poignant and heart-wrenching. It is a perfect ending to the story. But there is Chapter 23. I was surprised to find that it was there."
[...]
"It is of interest to me how Sorry reads like a memoir, though somewhat self-consciously, and admittedly fictive; the narrative shifting in and out of remembering and remembered sequences, in and out of contemplations on the reliability of memory, the seeing/knowing child, the effects of fear and grief, on forgetting. I think that lovers of memoir and explorers into the ideas of memory and grief would enjoy Gail Jones’ novel."
[...]
"Gail Jones’ way with language, her threaded images, metaphors, the extending whisps of established scenes, the emotion and intelligence in the craftsmanship of the form and story of Sorry is remarkable.The novel is placed in four parts, each with an epigraph, a quote from Shakespeare, not to be ignored. The four parts seem to function as good psychological breathers and to introduce a faint contemplative shift in memory/story; with the aforementioned quotes as tone-setting. And there is “A Note on “Sorry”” after the novel; which I read before. The “Note” is enlightening for those as ignorant as I am in regards to Australia-anything. My knowledge is hazily collected from a few films, novels, and travel narratives. Sorry is quite powerful on its own, but the “Note” creates a greater poignancy; and the characters as representations take on a greater clarity. Oh, the essays Sorry provokes. Oh, the Activism it incites…"
L @ omphaloskepsis
http://contemplatrix.wordpress.com/20...
Gail Jones’ Sorry begins with a child of 10, Perdita, caught in whispers and held hands with her sister friend Mary. Perdita’s father lying in a pool of blood on the floor. Perdita remembering. The page is turned and the narrator begins again and the story of Perdita’s childhood begins again with the introduction of her parents: who they are, how they meet, and how they come to be the way they are with one another. Perdita is then born, an unwanted intrusion into already private and individually driven non-lives.
Perdita’s Englishman father Nicholas is an anthropologist who has visions of grandeur which shift circumstantially. Coming into this career late, a veteran of the first World War, looking for something adventurous and meaningful and away, he finds a job in Australia and is posted at a rural cattle station. By this time he is married to Perdita’s mother (who is not all that young either), a woman as quickly and equally disappointed with her marital choice as her husband. Stella moves inwardly, isolated from familiarity and family (sisters with whom she was close). She clings, as she always has, to Shakespeare. She is prone to mental breaks and general madness and is completely self-absorbed.
Perdita is raised (in part) by the Aborigine people assigned the cattle station run by the Trevors, the Mrs Flora Trevor taking the lonely girl somewhat in hand. The Trevors’ youngest son, Billy, a deaf-mute, becomes one of Perdita’s only friends. Mary comes into the story a little later. Where the three will become one skin of a family : Perdita, Mary’s sister. Billy, Perdita’s brother. Their friendship means everything to Perdita, and the story.
The Reader begins to notice how the narrator is working her way around remembering the event with which the novel begins. She sets up the characters and the circumstances in as linear a fashion as the setting down of memory can be, sometimes nervously darting around a particular age–10–and moving forward. The narrator admits to flights of fancy, of concrete imaginings to events to which she couldn’t possibly be present, and with some melodrama, but I never felt a necessity to question her reliability on the whole. She is an adult, looking back. She is thoughtful in her expressions, particular in story, working her way around and toward an important revelation.
Perdita doesn’t mean to forget. The Listener of her Story understands that what happened must have been horrible. There are bright and beautiful moments of Perdita’s childhood to bask in, but much of her life was lonely, abusive, scary, and in need of some form of restitution.'
[...]
"It is a painful part of the story of Perdita’s childhood where Perdita would find moments where she felt love and affection for a mother who less frequently found moments in which she was affectionate with her daughter. The feelings were in some way a reassurance, because she should have some love for her mother, shouldn’t she? But the blood stain could only reach so far before dilution and dissolution; but how far?
As Stella had found true familial love with her sisters, so too does Perdita find it with her sister Mary, the Aboriginal girl who comes to help care for Perdita while Stella is hospitalized. Their connection is swift and deeply held. It is important to understand how deeply held Perdita and Mary’s sisterhood is. It is important to understand the people from which Mary was wrought, the Aborigine. The native cultural traditions are portrayed in stark contrast to the colonizing forces. They are intelligent, graceful, hospitable, wise, merciful.
What Sorry shares about the Aboriginal culture is relevant to the story, even as it is informative. No thing about Sorry feels inconsequential. The frequent and effortless dispensing of large words is not to propel the novel into high flying literary circles or to showcase the author’s lexical intellect. The narrator is intent on the most precise image, the most illustrative word to carry the complex weight of her meaning. Stella would apply the right quote from a Shakespearean story in the right moment. The setting would enhance and project the right amount of gravity. The novel’s title deceptively simple–in light of ignorance–is incredibly complex, heavily-weighted in meaning and context.
In considering the title, it is remarkable how infrequently the word itself appears in the novel. Nicholas’ sense of entitlement would never consider the word. Stella is too self-absorbed and in needing of the word herself to use it with any sincerity; is there a Shakespearean form to suit the occasion? Perdita comes to learn what “sorry” means to the native culture in a peripheral sense; she doesn’t register in childhood what she would come to register in adulthood.
“That was the point, Perdita would realise much later, at which, in humility, she should have said “sorry.” She should have imagined what kind of imprisonment this was, to be closed against the rustle of leaves and the feel of wind and of rain, to be taken from her place, her own place, where her mother had died, to be sealed in the forgetfulness of someone else’s crime. Perdita should have been otherwise. She should have said “sorry.” (216)
The revelation that Perdita comes to at the end of Chapter 22 is incredibly poignant and heart-wrenching. It is a perfect ending to the story. But there is Chapter 23. I was surprised to find that it was there."
[...]
"It is of interest to me how Sorry reads like a memoir, though somewhat self-consciously, and admittedly fictive; the narrative shifting in and out of remembering and remembered sequences, in and out of contemplations on the reliability of memory, the seeing/knowing child, the effects of fear and grief, on forgetting. I think that lovers of memoir and explorers into the ideas of memory and grief would enjoy Gail Jones’ novel."
[...]
"Gail Jones’ way with language, her threaded images, metaphors, the extending whisps of established scenes, the emotion and intelligence in the craftsmanship of the form and story of Sorry is remarkable.The novel is placed in four parts, each with an epigraph, a quote from Shakespeare, not to be ignored. The four parts seem to function as good psychological breathers and to introduce a faint contemplative shift in memory/story; with the aforementioned quotes as tone-setting. And there is “A Note on “Sorry”” after the novel; which I read before. The “Note” is enlightening for those as ignorant as I am in regards to Australia-anything. My knowledge is hazily collected from a few films, novels, and travel narratives. Sorry is quite powerful on its own, but the “Note” creates a greater poignancy; and the characters as representations take on a greater clarity. Oh, the essays Sorry provokes. Oh, the Activism it incites…"
L @ omphaloskepsis
http://contemplatrix.wordpress.com/20...
May 9, 2025
Nicholas and Stella, two extremely unemotional people, marry for no apparent reason. Since Nicholas is obsessed with his own (assumed) grandeur, he decides to study the australian Aborigines and write a masterpiece about them. Stella is very unhappy with their relocation to the outback. Soon after she gets pregnant and has a little daughter which she names Perdita, "based on the daughter of a dead woman". The child is basically on her own if not for few loving encounters with the local Aborigine Clan. Everything changes with the arrival of Mary, the aboriginal housemaid, that comes to stay with the family: Perdita has a "big sister" now, and the girls love each other dearly.
Nicholas is murdered and Mary is sentenced to jail. From this day on, Perdita has problems with her speech, she is not able to speak fluently. A few years later Perdita accepts the help of a therapist who notices her love for Shakespeare and encourages Perdita to practise sonnets. Bit by bit the control over her mouth and voice returns to the young woman, and suddenly she remembers the fatal night: it was her who murdered her father, when she surprised him raping Mary. And Mary herself had taken the blame to protect her little sister. Perdita searches for Mary but can't apologize: she died in prison.
***
When I started to read this, it seemed a good crime story that managed to keep me focused on its protagonist. BUT. Then I heard that the author wrote this a) as an apology to the aboriginal people, and b) as an adaptation of Shakespeare's Winter Tale.
Well... sorry, but now it makes no more sense. "Sorry" is a novel about being silent, not about those who were silenced. Aborigines play no major part, nothing of their culture is present. You could swap Mary into a chinese, irish, african or simply lower class housemaid, and the story would work as well. So... the apology is, sort of, telling people they never mattered...
Same with the Winter's Tale: yes, Perdita's mother compares herself to Queen Hermione constantly, but this is pure nonsense. Hermione was a happily married woman whose daughter was taken away from her. Stella has never been happy in her marriage, and her daughter was nothing more than a nuisance to her.
All in all, I would have been better off without the background knowledge. That spoiled it a bit.
Nicholas is murdered and Mary is sentenced to jail. From this day on, Perdita has problems with her speech, she is not able to speak fluently. A few years later Perdita accepts the help of a therapist who notices her love for Shakespeare and encourages Perdita to practise sonnets. Bit by bit the control over her mouth and voice returns to the young woman, and suddenly she remembers the fatal night: it was her who murdered her father, when she surprised him raping Mary. And Mary herself had taken the blame to protect her little sister. Perdita searches for Mary but can't apologize: she died in prison.
***
When I started to read this, it seemed a good crime story that managed to keep me focused on its protagonist. BUT. Then I heard that the author wrote this a) as an apology to the aboriginal people, and b) as an adaptation of Shakespeare's Winter Tale.
Well... sorry, but now it makes no more sense. "Sorry" is a novel about being silent, not about those who were silenced. Aborigines play no major part, nothing of their culture is present. You could swap Mary into a chinese, irish, african or simply lower class housemaid, and the story would work as well. So... the apology is, sort of, telling people they never mattered...
Same with the Winter's Tale: yes, Perdita's mother compares herself to Queen Hermione constantly, but this is pure nonsense. Hermione was a happily married woman whose daughter was taken away from her. Stella has never been happy in her marriage, and her daughter was nothing more than a nuisance to her.
All in all, I would have been better off without the background knowledge. That spoiled it a bit.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 12, 2021
Gail Jones has created a layered and thought-provoking story of disappointment, loss and reckoning with the past.
Set in Australia during World War II, the book expanded my perspective on the experience of that war in the southern hemisphere. But as large a role as the war plays on the characters' lives, it is more than a war book. The plot focuses on the main character, Perdita's childhood. With a distant, war-obsessed father and a mother with mental health issues, Perdita is largely on her own save for her friendships with the deaf neighbor Billy and Mary, an aboriginal woman employed by Perdita's family for domestic services.
The narration shifts between Perdita as a child and as an adult, coming to grips with a tumultuous childhood that climaxes traumatically causing Perdita to develop a stutter and become yet more isolated. Jones writes eloquently about childhood and the biases of memory:
There is a relish which people speak of their childhoods, but also a shrewd suppression of moments of inversion, when what is deducted begins to define the experience. In the deepest folds of memory, the heaviest sediments, paradoxically, are those produced by loss. The convolutions of what we are include unrecognised wanderings, pilgrimages, perhaps, back to these disappeared spaces, these obscurely, intangibly attractive sites.
And this:
Adults like to imagine that childhood has a wholesome and charming contiguity, but children too know, or at least now and then intuit, the dreadful fractures that craze any thoughtful life.
In reading the end notes explaining the book's title, I realized that the author approaches the book's theme of marginalized peoples obliquely and quite effectively. I found the book to be a thought-provoking, skillfully wrought account of damaged lives, personal sacrifice, and the potential for redemption.
Set in Australia during World War II, the book expanded my perspective on the experience of that war in the southern hemisphere. But as large a role as the war plays on the characters' lives, it is more than a war book. The plot focuses on the main character, Perdita's childhood. With a distant, war-obsessed father and a mother with mental health issues, Perdita is largely on her own save for her friendships with the deaf neighbor Billy and Mary, an aboriginal woman employed by Perdita's family for domestic services.
The narration shifts between Perdita as a child and as an adult, coming to grips with a tumultuous childhood that climaxes traumatically causing Perdita to develop a stutter and become yet more isolated. Jones writes eloquently about childhood and the biases of memory:
There is a relish which people speak of their childhoods, but also a shrewd suppression of moments of inversion, when what is deducted begins to define the experience. In the deepest folds of memory, the heaviest sediments, paradoxically, are those produced by loss. The convolutions of what we are include unrecognised wanderings, pilgrimages, perhaps, back to these disappeared spaces, these obscurely, intangibly attractive sites.
And this:
Adults like to imagine that childhood has a wholesome and charming contiguity, but children too know, or at least now and then intuit, the dreadful fractures that craze any thoughtful life.
In reading the end notes explaining the book's title, I realized that the author approaches the book's theme of marginalized peoples obliquely and quite effectively. I found the book to be a thought-provoking, skillfully wrought account of damaged lives, personal sacrifice, and the potential for redemption.
October 23, 2025
I thoroughly disliked this novel. Jones' use of flowery, difficult language was sparse and made the text feel disconnected. Her storytelling ultimately made me feel nothing for any of the characters, except Mary, who should've ran away as soon as she got to the Keene's property because that is one messed up family.
I found the plot to be very shallow. The events that 'changed' Perdita were ill-explained and irrelevant at times. Why these events changed her so drastically was unrealistic and just plain confusing. If I could use one word to describe how I felt reading the novel, it would be apathetic.
I despised that Perdita victimised herself, and I failed to understand why Jones' wanted us to direct our sympathy to her. In a story that aimed to change our view on colonisation, it was Mary's story who was largely forgotten in the end. Maybe this was purposeful- a metaphor for how First Nation's peoples stories have been silenced- but ultimately it was a very ineffective technique to get her point across. For a book that marketed itself as a way for Indigenous people to share their story, the main Indigenous character barely got any airtime, which is incredibly disappointing. This was a disappointment to a genre that needs more recognition and quality works. I think this text could have been entirely improved by changing the narrator from Pompous Perdita to Mary, although Jones' still would've projected the same white-saviour complex onto the characters, which is completely inappropriate considering her 'purpose' in writing the book.
also... I just did not care for the large chunks of Shakespeare randomly placed in the text. It made it awkward and clunky to read. Love the dude's work, but it served no purpose in this novel.
It is so bad, I want to give it a zero. But that's not possible. So I give it, a one
I found the plot to be very shallow. The events that 'changed' Perdita were ill-explained and irrelevant at times. Why these events changed her so drastically was unrealistic and just plain confusing. If I could use one word to describe how I felt reading the novel, it would be apathetic.
I despised that Perdita victimised herself, and I failed to understand why Jones' wanted us to direct our sympathy to her. In a story that aimed to change our view on colonisation, it was Mary's story who was largely forgotten in the end. Maybe this was purposeful- a metaphor for how First Nation's peoples stories have been silenced- but ultimately it was a very ineffective technique to get her point across. For a book that marketed itself as a way for Indigenous people to share their story, the main Indigenous character barely got any airtime, which is incredibly disappointing. This was a disappointment to a genre that needs more recognition and quality works. I think this text could have been entirely improved by changing the narrator from Pompous Perdita to Mary, although Jones' still would've projected the same white-saviour complex onto the characters, which is completely inappropriate considering her 'purpose' in writing the book.
also... I just did not care for the large chunks of Shakespeare randomly placed in the text. It made it awkward and clunky to read. Love the dude's work, but it served no purpose in this novel.
It is so bad, I want to give it a zero. But that's not possible. So I give it, a one
June 18, 2024
Gail Jones is a Western Australian author who had her first novel published in 2002 and who has written another nine novels since then. She is regularly either shortlisted or longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, she’s won a few Western Australian Premier’s Awards as well as the Australian Literary Society Gold Medal, yet I suspect she is nowhere near as well known in this country as she should be.
This novel explores Australian Aboriginal-white relationships in the period leading up to World War II, through the war, and for a short period after the end of hostilities. The first half is set around the northwestern town of Broome before the war when it was populated by a wide variety of people — black, white, and Japanese being the major ones under consideration.
Nicholas Keene, an Englishman, marries in haste and later brings his wife pregnant Stella to northwestern Australia where he has the vague hope of making a name for himself as an anthropologist. But he and his wife are woefully unprepared for the harsh land and climate. After a daughter, Perdita, is born, Keene’s dreams slowly begin to fade and both he and his wife both start becoming mentally unwell. She begins to lose touch with the world around her and Keene takes out his frustrations via domestic violence against his wife and sexual abuse against the young Aboriginal girl, Mary, who is employed as a housemaid. Only Perdita seems to have found a way to to survive by be-friending Mary and her people, and Billy, the slightly older deaf-mute boy who lives next door. But there is a sense of foreboding hanging over the family which is finally realised when Stella, Perdita and Billy arrive home unexpectedly one day and find Nicholas raping Mary in the main room of the house. Suddenly Nicholas is dead, bleeding from knife wounds in the back and neck, and Mary is arrested for his murder.
Stella becomes even more mentally isolated and Perdita develops an almost incontrollable stutter as a result of the violent incident. Around this time World War Two has started in the Pacific and the Japanese are bombing northern Australia, including Broome. Perdita and her mother are evacuated to Perth where they become separated when it is discovered that Stella is unable to look after either herself or her daughter. Stella goes into hospital and Perdita to a foster family where she starts to thrive for the first time in a loving environment.
There is a great beauty and simplicity to Jones’s writing, integrating themes of memory and loss, the Stolen Generations, race relations, ways of communicating and deep emotions into an engaging story about a family broken by isolation and despair. The title of this novel is a telling reminder that, at the time of its writing the Australian Government had not had the integrity to offer an apology for the shameful and criminal way so many Aboriginal people had been treated. That would finally arrive in 2008, a year after this book’s publication. So maybe we can read this book as this writer’s attempt to step up in their place and put forward that simple, yet evocative word, “Sorry”.
R: 4.2/5.0
This novel explores Australian Aboriginal-white relationships in the period leading up to World War II, through the war, and for a short period after the end of hostilities. The first half is set around the northwestern town of Broome before the war when it was populated by a wide variety of people — black, white, and Japanese being the major ones under consideration.
Nicholas Keene, an Englishman, marries in haste and later brings his wife pregnant Stella to northwestern Australia where he has the vague hope of making a name for himself as an anthropologist. But he and his wife are woefully unprepared for the harsh land and climate. After a daughter, Perdita, is born, Keene’s dreams slowly begin to fade and both he and his wife both start becoming mentally unwell. She begins to lose touch with the world around her and Keene takes out his frustrations via domestic violence against his wife and sexual abuse against the young Aboriginal girl, Mary, who is employed as a housemaid. Only Perdita seems to have found a way to to survive by be-friending Mary and her people, and Billy, the slightly older deaf-mute boy who lives next door. But there is a sense of foreboding hanging over the family which is finally realised when Stella, Perdita and Billy arrive home unexpectedly one day and find Nicholas raping Mary in the main room of the house. Suddenly Nicholas is dead, bleeding from knife wounds in the back and neck, and Mary is arrested for his murder.
Stella becomes even more mentally isolated and Perdita develops an almost incontrollable stutter as a result of the violent incident. Around this time World War Two has started in the Pacific and the Japanese are bombing northern Australia, including Broome. Perdita and her mother are evacuated to Perth where they become separated when it is discovered that Stella is unable to look after either herself or her daughter. Stella goes into hospital and Perdita to a foster family where she starts to thrive for the first time in a loving environment.
There is a great beauty and simplicity to Jones’s writing, integrating themes of memory and loss, the Stolen Generations, race relations, ways of communicating and deep emotions into an engaging story about a family broken by isolation and despair. The title of this novel is a telling reminder that, at the time of its writing the Australian Government had not had the integrity to offer an apology for the shameful and criminal way so many Aboriginal people had been treated. That would finally arrive in 2008, a year after this book’s publication. So maybe we can read this book as this writer’s attempt to step up in their place and put forward that simple, yet evocative word, “Sorry”.
R: 4.2/5.0
April 24, 2024
Most of the book jacket blurbs -- and most of the reviews -- emphasize the beauty of *Sorry*'s prose, which I also acknowledge, although to me that's the book's least remarkable feature. Surely one expects good writing? especially in a novel that explores both the power and limitations of speech? (Those who have read the novel will appreciate the pun I just made.) One could just as easily point out that this is a well-manipulated murder mystery, and when it appears to have been solved almost at the halfway mark and the reader wonders why there's more to come . . . well, okay, I can't spoil that.
*Sorry* handles a great deal of tragedy and poignancy without lapsing into sentimentality or cheap effect; to me this is a greater accomplishment than mellifluous prose. Jones examines the depth and the fragility of childhood bonds in the face of defective, uncaring, or brutal adults as well as the appalling treatment of the native populations by Australia's white settlers (I must see if I can arrange a dinner date for her with Tom Spanbauer) -- all this makes for painful but compelling reading. The one aspect of the novel I found initially off-putting was the occasional shift from third-person omniscient, which constitutes most of the narrative, to first-person. The latter seems limited to main character Perdita's reflections, which appear often enough in the main narrative, but then it occurred to me: the moments of heartbreak and horror are all in the main narrative, which is oddly reflected in Perdita's own loss of fluent speech. Accomplishments like this should not go unnoticed.
4 1/2 stars, curved upward. I'll be looking out for more of Gail Jones's writings.
*Sorry* handles a great deal of tragedy and poignancy without lapsing into sentimentality or cheap effect; to me this is a greater accomplishment than mellifluous prose. Jones examines the depth and the fragility of childhood bonds in the face of defective, uncaring, or brutal adults as well as the appalling treatment of the native populations by Australia's white settlers (I must see if I can arrange a dinner date for her with Tom Spanbauer) -- all this makes for painful but compelling reading. The one aspect of the novel I found initially off-putting was the occasional shift from third-person omniscient, which constitutes most of the narrative, to first-person. The latter seems limited to main character Perdita's reflections, which appear often enough in the main narrative, but then it occurred to me: the moments of heartbreak and horror are all in the main narrative, which is oddly reflected in Perdita's own loss of fluent speech. Accomplishments like this should not go unnoticed.
4 1/2 stars, curved upward. I'll be looking out for more of Gail Jones's writings.
November 15, 2020
It so often is rewarding when a good friend literally forces a book on you. My soulmate mailed this slim and hard hitting novel to me from halfway across the world, Australia and thereby opened a whole new vista in my reading scope. It is the perfect moment to have read this work as the US celebrates once again the grace and resilience and steadfast genius of black women in delivering systemic change.
Sorry is a novel that brings alive that immense grace and power that women in the most disadvantaged communities develop and build on. Their love is immense and all encompassing for their community but so often beyond as they touch and transform people they should hate. Mary, the aboriginal character towers over all others in this book, others who had everything and made nothing of it.
Sorry is a novel that brings alive that immense grace and power that women in the most disadvantaged communities develop and build on. Their love is immense and all encompassing for their community but so often beyond as they touch and transform people they should hate. Mary, the aboriginal character towers over all others in this book, others who had everything and made nothing of it.
October 23, 2017
This may, or may not, be a good book about Australia, but it is a very, very good book about stuttering, especially of the psychogenic variety. I took copious notes from it for my own novel about stammering: as a stutterer myself, I believed she got everything right. That does not happen very often.
March 29, 2019
great Australian novel. The Shakespeare bits were a bit annoying (coming from a non English speaking background I have trouble understanding why Shakespeare is still being thought in Aussie schools) - anyway, that's beside the point.
July 8, 2025
Solid 4.5
Love enveloping in Gail Jones' rich prose...close to Sixty Lights level here in parts. The denouement felt a little undercooked and 'too neat' for my personal taste and hence took some shine off; but a great read from a great author.
Love enveloping in Gail Jones' rich prose...close to Sixty Lights level here in parts. The denouement felt a little undercooked and 'too neat' for my personal taste and hence took some shine off; but a great read from a great author.
May 20, 2018
Very eye-opening text. Definitely confronting in it's ideas but overall a very good book to study. Read in relation to 'The Great Australian Silence'.
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