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Ironbark
Shortlisted for the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award.
He shouldn’t have a life he never asked for and be expected to love men. With their problems never spoken outward. And childhood trauma and family issues. Men wanting to be held or hold.
Markus Bello’s life has stalled. Living in a small country town, mourning the death of his best friend, Grayson, Markus is isolated and adrift. As time passes, and life continues around him, Markus must try to face his grief, and come to terms with what is left.
Stylistically assured and quietly compelling, Ironbark is an elliptical and beautifully evoked contemporary coming-of-age story. Through his protagonist, Markus, newcomer Jay Carmichael depicts the conflict and confusion of life as a gay man in rural Australia, and explores how place can shape personal identity by both offering and restricting potential. A moving portrait of grief and loss, Ironbark is also a devastating account of the toll exacted by our society’s expectations of what it means to be a man.
He shouldn’t have a life he never asked for and be expected to love men. With their problems never spoken outward. And childhood trauma and family issues. Men wanting to be held or hold.
Markus Bello’s life has stalled. Living in a small country town, mourning the death of his best friend, Grayson, Markus is isolated and adrift. As time passes, and life continues around him, Markus must try to face his grief, and come to terms with what is left.
Stylistically assured and quietly compelling, Ironbark is an elliptical and beautifully evoked contemporary coming-of-age story. Through his protagonist, Markus, newcomer Jay Carmichael depicts the conflict and confusion of life as a gay man in rural Australia, and explores how place can shape personal identity by both offering and restricting potential. A moving portrait of grief and loss, Ironbark is also a devastating account of the toll exacted by our society’s expectations of what it means to be a man.
224 pages, Paperback
First published April 30, 2018
6 people are currently reading
231 people want to read
About the author
Jay Carmichael
4 books11 followersJay Carmichael is the author of Ironbark, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 13, 2018
3.5★s
“They were sketch-like oil paintings, mostly of men: some naked, some clothed, some together, some alone. There was nothing provocative or progressive, and Markus had only been able to tell that they were men because he’d been looking hard enough through the restless paint-strokes, which Georges’s deliberate hand had seemingly placed in an attempt to censor the truth. They made Markus smile. He wanted to get in between the layers of colour, where the tones shifted and changed and intermingled. They each seemed so full that he felt like if he stood closer, he’d breathe in what he hasn’t accepted in himself.”
Ironbark is the first novel by Australian author, Jay Carmichael. Markus Bello is grieving. His best friend Grayson is dead and he never got to tell him how he truly feels. Nor can he tell anyone else: he’s living in a small Australian rural town where, even in this enlightened age, expectations weigh heavily and a man’s sexual uncertainty is unlikely to be welcomed with open arms.
Against a background of an ephemeral lake, drought, water management and the Basin Plan, Carmichael gives the reader an authentic voice in Markus. Divided into four parts, the story is told in reverse, beginning with the events of Markus’s life from two weeks after his friend’s death. Carmichael deftly conveys the attitudes prevalent in a small town, and the problems encountered by youth: boredom, angst, anger, pressure to conform and, in this case, the concealment of true feeling, an unrequited love.
Carmichael’s descriptive prose easily evokes grief: “Being in that bedroom or being out here – there’s no difference. It isn’t the light that’s threatening. Absence produces a vacuum so powerful that any words spoken in it are torn apart”; falling in love: “Where are you; what are you; who are you? And why do I feel like you are my anchor? I hear you inside me, like taking a seashell to my ear”; and beauty: “He’s forgotten that Georges’s gaze is almost ceremonious: eyes like the blue light coming through stained glass and shining into a phial of holy water”.
This novel is bound to strike a chord with certain sections of society, although his lack quote marks for speech is bound to irritate some readers. A moving read.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by The Lifted Brow and Scribe Publishing.
“They were sketch-like oil paintings, mostly of men: some naked, some clothed, some together, some alone. There was nothing provocative or progressive, and Markus had only been able to tell that they were men because he’d been looking hard enough through the restless paint-strokes, which Georges’s deliberate hand had seemingly placed in an attempt to censor the truth. They made Markus smile. He wanted to get in between the layers of colour, where the tones shifted and changed and intermingled. They each seemed so full that he felt like if he stood closer, he’d breathe in what he hasn’t accepted in himself.”
Ironbark is the first novel by Australian author, Jay Carmichael. Markus Bello is grieving. His best friend Grayson is dead and he never got to tell him how he truly feels. Nor can he tell anyone else: he’s living in a small Australian rural town where, even in this enlightened age, expectations weigh heavily and a man’s sexual uncertainty is unlikely to be welcomed with open arms.
Against a background of an ephemeral lake, drought, water management and the Basin Plan, Carmichael gives the reader an authentic voice in Markus. Divided into four parts, the story is told in reverse, beginning with the events of Markus’s life from two weeks after his friend’s death. Carmichael deftly conveys the attitudes prevalent in a small town, and the problems encountered by youth: boredom, angst, anger, pressure to conform and, in this case, the concealment of true feeling, an unrequited love.
Carmichael’s descriptive prose easily evokes grief: “Being in that bedroom or being out here – there’s no difference. It isn’t the light that’s threatening. Absence produces a vacuum so powerful that any words spoken in it are torn apart”; falling in love: “Where are you; what are you; who are you? And why do I feel like you are my anchor? I hear you inside me, like taking a seashell to my ear”; and beauty: “He’s forgotten that Georges’s gaze is almost ceremonious: eyes like the blue light coming through stained glass and shining into a phial of holy water”.
This novel is bound to strike a chord with certain sections of society, although his lack quote marks for speech is bound to irritate some readers. A moving read.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by The Lifted Brow and Scribe Publishing.
December 16, 2020
Remember the name Jay Carmichael. Believe you me: this kid is going places.
Ironbark isn't for everyone. It's dense, it's non-linear, it moves at a glacial pace; but the prose--oh, the prose... Every line is packed with immense imagery, and plays with the both the evocation and omission of emotion so deftly that you don't even realize how incredibly emotional the entire thing is until you notice how deeply it has its hooks in you.
The plot isn't groundbreaking -- queer coming-of-age within the confines of a toxically masculine environment, even if it hardly even is a coming-of-age -- but Carmichael isn't trying to re-invent the wheel. He's the perfect example of someone writing their own truth and letting others in on the process. Everything, from sexuality, to masculinity, to depression and self-harm, is rendered so powerfully that it takes the power of a true novelist to pull it off.
Ironbark isn't for everyone. It's dense, it's non-linear, it moves at a glacial pace; but the prose--oh, the prose... Every line is packed with immense imagery, and plays with the both the evocation and omission of emotion so deftly that you don't even realize how incredibly emotional the entire thing is until you notice how deeply it has its hooks in you.
The plot isn't groundbreaking -- queer coming-of-age within the confines of a toxically masculine environment, even if it hardly even is a coming-of-age -- but Carmichael isn't trying to re-invent the wheel. He's the perfect example of someone writing their own truth and letting others in on the process. Everything, from sexuality, to masculinity, to depression and self-harm, is rendered so powerfully that it takes the power of a true novelist to pull it off.
November 29, 2020
The only thing stuck in Markus’s life is himself. The people around him provide opportunities to deal with Grayson’s death, or move on, or walk away from everything. And I feel at some point these characters have asked Markus if he’s staying or going. But Markus lost someone he loves, and he doesn’t want to deal with it because that means letting go of the one thing he cared about. So he’s stuck here between making peace with Grayson’s death and clinging to it by collecting the memories he and Grayson scattered around Noaks.
Read my whole review at: https://queercontent.press/2018/12/17...
Read my whole review at: https://queercontent.press/2018/12/17...
Read
June 12, 2018Jay Carmichael approaches the world as a poet, from an angle that is all his own. He reveals a hidden, pulsing reality beneath the surface of the everyday.
Miles Allinson, Author of Fever of Animals
In sparse and quiet prose, Jay Carmichael's debut is an enveloping novel about grief, survival, and the futility of finding peace in a place you don't belong.
Shaun Prescott, Author of The Town
‘[An] accomplished debut … Carmichael has a poetic turn of phrase, and he plays with time, moving the story back and forth ... keeping readers on their toes.
Books+Publishing
Jay Carmichael's Ironbarkdoes the extraordinary. It achieves what we readers want from the best of fiction: to tell a story anew, and to capture a world in all its wonder, ugliness, tenderness, and cruelty. This is a novel of coming of age and of grief that astonishes us by its wisdom and by its compassion. It's a work of great and simple beauty, so good it made me jealous. And grateful.
Christos Tsiolkas
What Ironbark captures beautifully is the yearning one might feel while growing up unable to understand or express love and attraction freely; a yearning to kiss your best friend, a longing for an end to a loneliness, like cracked land waiting for rain. Ironbark is a still, quiet, compelling novel that reaches an ending both sad and peaceful.
Good Reading
The novel draws deeply on the love of nature that once inspired Carmichael to pursue botanical science … It is almost poetic in its descriptions of a slightly surreal landscape overcome by an oncoming storm that seems to mirror Markus’ silent struggles.
sbs.com.au
[A] subtle, impressionistic novel about adolescent alienation and masculinity in rural Australia … Carmichael paints an exquisitely tender portrait of doomed adolescent longing and love.
The Monthly
Ironbark is an elegant novel, one that reveals itself slowly. It is both a wonderful evocation of the listlessness of grief and a disturbing portrait of shame and self-doubt. In many ways the story is as familiar as the town, hot and dusty with drought, but it is also fresh and new, as it questions with an unexpected urgency what it means to be a man.
Adelaide Advertiser
Miles Allinson, Author of Fever of Animals
In sparse and quiet prose, Jay Carmichael's debut is an enveloping novel about grief, survival, and the futility of finding peace in a place you don't belong.
Shaun Prescott, Author of The Town
‘[An] accomplished debut … Carmichael has a poetic turn of phrase, and he plays with time, moving the story back and forth ... keeping readers on their toes.
Books+Publishing
Jay Carmichael's Ironbarkdoes the extraordinary. It achieves what we readers want from the best of fiction: to tell a story anew, and to capture a world in all its wonder, ugliness, tenderness, and cruelty. This is a novel of coming of age and of grief that astonishes us by its wisdom and by its compassion. It's a work of great and simple beauty, so good it made me jealous. And grateful.
Christos Tsiolkas
What Ironbark captures beautifully is the yearning one might feel while growing up unable to understand or express love and attraction freely; a yearning to kiss your best friend, a longing for an end to a loneliness, like cracked land waiting for rain. Ironbark is a still, quiet, compelling novel that reaches an ending both sad and peaceful.
Good Reading
The novel draws deeply on the love of nature that once inspired Carmichael to pursue botanical science … It is almost poetic in its descriptions of a slightly surreal landscape overcome by an oncoming storm that seems to mirror Markus’ silent struggles.
sbs.com.au
[A] subtle, impressionistic novel about adolescent alienation and masculinity in rural Australia … Carmichael paints an exquisitely tender portrait of doomed adolescent longing and love.
The Monthly
Ironbark is an elegant novel, one that reveals itself slowly. It is both a wonderful evocation of the listlessness of grief and a disturbing portrait of shame and self-doubt. In many ways the story is as familiar as the town, hot and dusty with drought, but it is also fresh and new, as it questions with an unexpected urgency what it means to be a man.
Adelaide Advertiser
March 12, 2019
The strength of this book lies in the unsaid, the untold; the gaps where we bottle emotions and feelings inside rather than reveal our authentic selves. This coming of age novel explores adolescent sexuality and the isolation of living in regional Australia, while navigating through the traumas of grief and the conflicts of male identity. Jay Carmichael is definitely an author to watch.
Read
May 29, 2018Jay Carmichael's Ironbark does the extraordinary. It achieves what we readers want from the best of fiction: to tell a story anew, and to capture a world in all its wonder, ugliness, tenderness, and cruelty. This is a novel of coming of age and of grief that astonishes us by its wisdom and by its compassion. It's a work of great and simple beauty, so good it made me jealous. And grateful.
Christos Tsiolkas
Jay Carmichael approaches the world as a poet, from an angle that is all his own. He reveals a hidden, pulsing reality beneath the surface of the everyday.
Miles Allinson, Author of Fever of Animals
In sparse and quiet prose, Jay Carmichael's debut is an enveloping novel about grief, survival, and the futility of finding peace in a place you don't belong.
Shaun Prescott, Author of The Town
[An] accomplished debut … Carmichael has a poetic turn of phrase, and he plays with time, moving the story back and forth … keeping readers on their toes.
Books+Publishing
What Ironbark captures beautifully is the yearning one might feel while growing up unable to understand or express love and attraction freely; a yearning to kiss your best friend, a longing for an end to a loneliness, like cracked land waiting for rain. Ironbark is a still, quiet, compelling novel that reaches an ending both sad and peaceful.
Good Reading
The novel draws deeply on the love of nature that once inspired Carmichael to pursue botanical science … It is almost poetic in its descriptions of a slightly surreal landscape overcome by an oncoming storm that seems to mirror Markus’ silent struggles.
sbs.com.au
[A] subtle, impressionistic novel about adolescent alienation and masculinity in rural Australia … Carmichael paints an exquisitely tender portrait of doomed adolescent longing and love.
The Monthly
Christos Tsiolkas
Jay Carmichael approaches the world as a poet, from an angle that is all his own. He reveals a hidden, pulsing reality beneath the surface of the everyday.
Miles Allinson, Author of Fever of Animals
In sparse and quiet prose, Jay Carmichael's debut is an enveloping novel about grief, survival, and the futility of finding peace in a place you don't belong.
Shaun Prescott, Author of The Town
[An] accomplished debut … Carmichael has a poetic turn of phrase, and he plays with time, moving the story back and forth … keeping readers on their toes.
Books+Publishing
What Ironbark captures beautifully is the yearning one might feel while growing up unable to understand or express love and attraction freely; a yearning to kiss your best friend, a longing for an end to a loneliness, like cracked land waiting for rain. Ironbark is a still, quiet, compelling novel that reaches an ending both sad and peaceful.
Good Reading
The novel draws deeply on the love of nature that once inspired Carmichael to pursue botanical science … It is almost poetic in its descriptions of a slightly surreal landscape overcome by an oncoming storm that seems to mirror Markus’ silent struggles.
sbs.com.au
[A] subtle, impressionistic novel about adolescent alienation and masculinity in rural Australia … Carmichael paints an exquisitely tender portrait of doomed adolescent longing and love.
The Monthly
August 29, 2018
I sometimes fall into the trap of reading a book because people have spoken about how affecting and moving it is. I should be alerted by words in reviews like poignant, beautiful, poetic and tender.
There's nothing wrong with this book. It just didn't appeal to me. Lovely words, deep messages and symbolism, doesn't entertain me. I decided some time ago to avoid the award winners and the books that put prose ahead of a decent story.
There was a lot of symbolism in this book and it was quite beautiful, but it did nothing for me. Strange construction, obscure action and miserable characters.
I'm off to read an Alexander McCall Smith novel for a good dose of warmth, engagement and reassurance.
There's nothing wrong with this book. It just didn't appeal to me. Lovely words, deep messages and symbolism, doesn't entertain me. I decided some time ago to avoid the award winners and the books that put prose ahead of a decent story.
There was a lot of symbolism in this book and it was quite beautiful, but it did nothing for me. Strange construction, obscure action and miserable characters.
I'm off to read an Alexander McCall Smith novel for a good dose of warmth, engagement and reassurance.
January 11, 2019
This book appeared on lists of various well-known writers as "the" book to read this summer. Perhaps I was in the wrong frame of mind but I was totally uninterested in the main character Markus, a young man living in a small country town. He is grieving the death of his best friend Grayson and struggling with his own sexual identity. It all sounded interesting, but for me it was not and I gave it away at the half-way mark. Perhaps that is why I missed the explanation of the botanical and scientific names being given in brackets after any mention of a plant or animal. Meant to be intriguing perhaps, but for me, an annoyance.
abandoned
September 13, 2022Abandoned at page 6.
There are some details I just don't want to know about...
There are some details I just don't want to know about...
November 18, 2018
Markus lives outside a small, drought-ridden country town. His love for fellow school boy Grayson is unrequited.
The novel is split into two halves: "Two weeks after", and "On the day". To disclose what happens on the day would be a spoiler. Spanning several years, but not told chronologically, manages to keep The Reader slightly unsettled. Adding to this effect is the author's use of what I would call an idiosyncratic bogan vernacular. What blew me away reading this is the imagery the author summons about life in the bush, living through a debilitating drought, the ecstasy and bitter lows of undeclared love. This isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, however the more I read the more impressed I became.
The novel is split into two halves: "Two weeks after", and "On the day". To disclose what happens on the day would be a spoiler. Spanning several years, but not told chronologically, manages to keep The Reader slightly unsettled. Adding to this effect is the author's use of what I would call an idiosyncratic bogan vernacular. What blew me away reading this is the imagery the author summons about life in the bush, living through a debilitating drought, the ecstasy and bitter lows of undeclared love. This isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, however the more I read the more impressed I became.
August 15, 2020
So this book is beautiful...
This novel is a meditation on grief. Everything about the style of writing sets a palpable and intoxicating tone of melancholy. Even the repeated citation of the scientific names of plants and animals reinforces Marcus‘s desperate need to cope, as some people recite multiplication tables to deal with anxiety.
The characters are real, and sympathetic. The writing is frequently stunning; quotable lines pepper the text. The tone captures the dry and sun-bleached landscape, and mirrors the disaffected populace of the rural and wasting countryside.
The artistry of this book is gorgeous.
It almost works too well... because it also kept me at a remove, denied being truly invited to be involved on an emotional level.
This novel is a meditation on grief. Everything about the style of writing sets a palpable and intoxicating tone of melancholy. Even the repeated citation of the scientific names of plants and animals reinforces Marcus‘s desperate need to cope, as some people recite multiplication tables to deal with anxiety.
The characters are real, and sympathetic. The writing is frequently stunning; quotable lines pepper the text. The tone captures the dry and sun-bleached landscape, and mirrors the disaffected populace of the rural and wasting countryside.
The artistry of this book is gorgeous.
It almost works too well... because it also kept me at a remove, denied being truly invited to be involved on an emotional level.
June 14, 2023
This debut novel, Ironbark by young Australian author Jay Carmichael, is a coming-of-age story. At 210 pages, this novella is an evocative tale of the conflict and the confusion of a young gay man in rural Australia, who doesn’t belong. Suffering the loss and grief of his best friend Grayson, Markus is isolated and seemingly lost as he struggles to fit into a stilted social order. The narrative has a claustrophobic feel as Markus drifts through life, failing in his apprenticeship at the local garage, being forced to play a charity football match he doesn’t care to and struggling to realise his own true self. With its insightful characters and readable prose, this is a fine debut with a three and a half stars read rating. As always, the opinions herein are totally my own and freely given.
December 31, 2018
Shortlisted for the 2016 Victorian Premier's Literary Award, ‘Ironbark’ by Jay Carmichael is an elliptical and a beautiful portrayal of adolescent alienation and masculinity in rural Australia. In sparse and poetic prose, the author immerses us in the concerns of an oppressive small town and the confusion and life as a gay teenager in a world where toxic masculinity reigns supreme. Each of the main protagonist’s destructive silences is a profound parable and a portrait of grief and loss. A distressing account of the toll exacted by our society’s expectations when one is different. A superb debut and an author to watch.
August 5, 2018
Shocked reading this - the author's approach to discussing self-harm read so nonchalantly and normalised for the affected character. Really poignant commentary on how self-harm and mental illness must feel to the sufferer.
July 3, 2019
A moving 'coming of age' novel...and with Markus being gay adds another dimension to the prejudices he confronts. Very well written. A simple story told with compassion that draws in the reader...just what a reader seeks.
August 7, 2018
Devastatingly beautiful. The real beauty is in what is left unsaid, what is absent. Anyone who has loved someone but hasn’t been able to tell them will get it.
Read
November 4, 2019DNF
September 16, 2020
I wanted to enjoyit but way too much going into detail of everything. I perfer a stroy that moves on.
November 9, 2023
Really sweet and well written. Explore pretty regular book themes but in a way that's quite unique. Overly wordy at times but if that's the style you like I think you'd enjoy this book
July 14, 2020
we need more aussie fiction like this. carmichael absolutely nailed the choking toxicity of masculinity and sexuality in the australian country, and that feeling of claustrophobia it creates; only knowing to be a caricature of manliness, because you know you can be nothing else, and simply not knowing how to be anything else either. i can't stop thinking about this book, it really was something else
November 7, 2021
The story of a young man growing up and struggling with his sexuality in an isolated rural town is both sensitive and forthright. Carmichael writes elegantly in his depiction of a mind trapped in melancholy, successfully creating a real sense of atmosphere and location through description and imagery. The depictions of both physical and mental landscapes are handled effectively, taking the reader into the world of a character whose self-identity is informed by restrictive cultural expectations. The story arc was where the text really fell down for me and whilst I could see what the author was doing with the structure of the text, the resolution did kind of fall a bit flat for me.
December 27, 2022
Read the warnings first. Unexpected.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews