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Cleave
Snip Freeman is an artist with a passion for running away - from jobs, from friends, from lovers and from family. But the arrival of a cheque gives her new purpose and she advertises for a companion to journey into the Australian outback. "City boy" Dave is the first and only to respond.
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
4 people are currently reading
255 people want to read
About the author
Nikki Gemmell
35 books303 followersNikki Gemmell has written four novels, Shiver, Cleave, Lovesong, The Bride Stripped Bare and The Book Of Rapture, and one non-fiction book, Pleasure: An Almanac for the Heart. Her work has been internationally critically acclaimed and translated into many languages.
In France she's been described as a female Jack Kerouac, in Australia as one of the most original and engaging authors of her generation and in the US as one of the few truly original voices to emerge in a long time.
The French literary review "Lire" has included her in a list of what it calls the fifty most important writers in the world - the ones it believes will have a significant influence on the literature of the 21st century. The criteria for selection included a very individual voice and unmistakeable style, as well as an original choice of subject. Nikki Gemmell was selected along with such novelists as Rick Moody, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Froer, Rohinton Mistry, Tim Winton, Colum McCann, Michel Faber and Hari Kunzru among others.
Born in Wollongong, Australia, she now lives in London.
In France she's been described as a female Jack Kerouac, in Australia as one of the most original and engaging authors of her generation and in the US as one of the few truly original voices to emerge in a long time.
The French literary review "Lire" has included her in a list of what it calls the fifty most important writers in the world - the ones it believes will have a significant influence on the literature of the 21st century. The criteria for selection included a very individual voice and unmistakeable style, as well as an original choice of subject. Nikki Gemmell was selected along with such novelists as Rick Moody, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Froer, Rohinton Mistry, Tim Winton, Colum McCann, Michel Faber and Hari Kunzru among others.
Born in Wollongong, Australia, she now lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
September 5, 2023
Nikki Gemmell will always write women presented with a raw and unfiltered lens. Sex, the sense of self and her place in family will always be deconstructed in her work.
She always writes well, edgy. No words wasted. She does not overwrite, each sentence says only just enough, it is always hard hitting, full of graphic scenes without a sense of apology. Nor should there be.
Those who know this author’s work that have experienced her writings such as in The Bride Stripped Bare will not be shocked on the subject of women’s desires, expectations in life, their deepest desires. It is the same here, where we meet Snip. Always running from her life, bought on initially by being taken by her father at a young age, suffering trauma and forced into a life on the road.
She’s been the town bike, unapologetically so, takes money for sex. A free spirit who paints and seems to leave when things with men become to close for comfort. This internal grappling comes to the fore after a life and death situation with her father, where long held secrets emerge and a letting go of these.
This book is extremely well written which would lead me to a 4 star rating, and 3 stars for me for the way it didn’t hold me like contemporary fiction does. This author writes remarkably insightful literary fiction which those who love the genre will surely appreciate.
Here is one quick line I jotted down. Silence like mould has grown over Merve and Hazel's marriage.
I listened to the audio version of this on the BorrowBox platform via my pulbic library, at 1.5 speed. Narrated well by Kate Hosking. Accents and changeovers provided seemless listening.
She always writes well, edgy. No words wasted. She does not overwrite, each sentence says only just enough, it is always hard hitting, full of graphic scenes without a sense of apology. Nor should there be.
Those who know this author’s work that have experienced her writings such as in The Bride Stripped Bare will not be shocked on the subject of women’s desires, expectations in life, their deepest desires. It is the same here, where we meet Snip. Always running from her life, bought on initially by being taken by her father at a young age, suffering trauma and forced into a life on the road.
She’s been the town bike, unapologetically so, takes money for sex. A free spirit who paints and seems to leave when things with men become to close for comfort. This internal grappling comes to the fore after a life and death situation with her father, where long held secrets emerge and a letting go of these.
This book is extremely well written which would lead me to a 4 star rating, and 3 stars for me for the way it didn’t hold me like contemporary fiction does. This author writes remarkably insightful literary fiction which those who love the genre will surely appreciate.
Here is one quick line I jotted down. Silence like mould has grown over Merve and Hazel's marriage.
I listened to the audio version of this on the BorrowBox platform via my pulbic library, at 1.5 speed. Narrated well by Kate Hosking. Accents and changeovers provided seemless listening.
July 22, 2011
I have a version where the title of this book is called Cleave. I have struggled with some of Gemmell's other work - am still trying to finish The Book of Rapture - but this got me hooked and I finished it in a day. At last I found another of her books that sets the foundations of the haunting poetry that she achieved in The Bride Stripped Bare. She makes you a little uncomfortable at times but I think the risks she takes pay off - her prose can be coarse and exquisite in equal measures. Made me somewhat homesick too. But I am one of those Australians who has never been to the NT....
September 29, 2014
I liked this book because it has 2 things I like in a book: location in a foreign culture (Australia and Aborigines) and analyzing of people's personality problems (Snip's inability to trust people, her father's selfishness). It was a good, easy read.
March 2, 2021
2.5 stars
The blurb in Goodreads says "Lovely novel set in the Australian outback, about a woman artist who sets out on a journey to re-discover her father, who had abandoned her." I didn't find anything lovely about it, in fact a lot of it was disturbing. A woman wandering to find her place, falling in love but not being able to properly settle down. A father who left when she was young with a secret, a horrible secret. Violence toward people, violence towards animals, and just a lot of heartbreak. Yeah I get it was written well, I just didn't like the "lovely" topic.
The blurb in Goodreads says "Lovely novel set in the Australian outback, about a woman artist who sets out on a journey to re-discover her father, who had abandoned her." I didn't find anything lovely about it, in fact a lot of it was disturbing. A woman wandering to find her place, falling in love but not being able to properly settle down. A father who left when she was young with a secret, a horrible secret. Violence toward people, violence towards animals, and just a lot of heartbreak. Yeah I get it was written well, I just didn't like the "lovely" topic.
April 11, 2018
A masterpiece.
February 3, 2019
The Australia in this book is the Australia that all Australian novels are supposed to be about: set in the outback, full of indigenous characters, not appropriating their culture but living in harmony with them, battling the elements and inner demons. The problem with that is most Australians don’t live lives anything like what is described here and are made to feel less Australian than those living a supposedly more authentic life.
Snip, an artist, has recently received an inheritance from her grandmother along with a note requesting she track down her father to discover the family secret. Her mother wishes she would just let it be but Snip’s never been good at doing what’s expected of her. Neither has her father. Her real name is Philippa and Snip is a nickname from when her father abducted her as a child and cut her hair to pass her off as a boy.
So Snip buys a ute in Sydney, hires Dave as a driver (because she can’t drive the manual car but wouldn’t be seen dead in an automatic and needs someone to drive/teach her) and heads to Alice Springs in the middle of outback Australia where her father has been living a reclusive life for the past two decades.
Dave and Snip have no chemistry whatsoever but we’re supposed to think they do and they get it on, so whatever. When they get to Alice Springs, he makes a dumb comment about how he has to prioritise his friends while he’s in town so without looking back, she heads off to the remote community her father lives in and where she is always drawn back to after her long travels in search of inspiration for her paintings. It’s an indigenous township but Snip is welcomed in a way most other white people aren’t because she’s made an effort to learn the language and the culture and not trample all over it.
Her father, however, is a bit clueless. And when he accidentally steals “sacred men’s business” by having an old car body towed away, he decides to run away from the expected anger and tribal revenge of the indigenous men and hide out at a mate’s place. Snip decides to drive him. But the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Nobody knew where they were going, nobody knows they need helps and nobody is coming to look for them.
This book is over 20 years old but it has a timeless quality. It could have been written last year or 50 years ago. The prose is fluid and lyrical. But that appears to be where all the focus has gone. Cleave is 60% description, 30% character and 10% plot. The balance is off.
It’s also full of women playing roles – good daughter, good mother, good girlfriend – without considering whether their parents, their children, their partners deserve their loyalty (they almost universally don’t). Snip is made to feel guilty about the fact that she likes to live her life a certain way and she lets the people around her dictate what she does.
By the time I got to the end of the book, I realised it was a literary Mills & Boon. A woman with a tormented past and desperate for a connection. Confected misunderstandings that lead to completely unnecessary plot twists and turns. And while the author managed to avoid culture appropriation, the indigenous characters were nothing more than background to the all-white cast of lead characters.
It was just okay. It wasn’t less than okay. It wasn’t more than okay. It’s not the kind of book you will read twice. It’s not the kind of book you will remember fondly. It’s not the kind of book you will remember much about at all after a few months. It’s good writing lost in a poor plot. And it’s a shame.
2.5 stars
Snip, an artist, has recently received an inheritance from her grandmother along with a note requesting she track down her father to discover the family secret. Her mother wishes she would just let it be but Snip’s never been good at doing what’s expected of her. Neither has her father. Her real name is Philippa and Snip is a nickname from when her father abducted her as a child and cut her hair to pass her off as a boy.
So Snip buys a ute in Sydney, hires Dave as a driver (because she can’t drive the manual car but wouldn’t be seen dead in an automatic and needs someone to drive/teach her) and heads to Alice Springs in the middle of outback Australia where her father has been living a reclusive life for the past two decades.
Dave and Snip have no chemistry whatsoever but we’re supposed to think they do and they get it on, so whatever. When they get to Alice Springs, he makes a dumb comment about how he has to prioritise his friends while he’s in town so without looking back, she heads off to the remote community her father lives in and where she is always drawn back to after her long travels in search of inspiration for her paintings. It’s an indigenous township but Snip is welcomed in a way most other white people aren’t because she’s made an effort to learn the language and the culture and not trample all over it.
Her father, however, is a bit clueless. And when he accidentally steals “sacred men’s business” by having an old car body towed away, he decides to run away from the expected anger and tribal revenge of the indigenous men and hide out at a mate’s place. Snip decides to drive him. But the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Nobody knew where they were going, nobody knows they need helps and nobody is coming to look for them.
This book is over 20 years old but it has a timeless quality. It could have been written last year or 50 years ago. The prose is fluid and lyrical. But that appears to be where all the focus has gone. Cleave is 60% description, 30% character and 10% plot. The balance is off.
It’s also full of women playing roles – good daughter, good mother, good girlfriend – without considering whether their parents, their children, their partners deserve their loyalty (they almost universally don’t). Snip is made to feel guilty about the fact that she likes to live her life a certain way and she lets the people around her dictate what she does.
By the time I got to the end of the book, I realised it was a literary Mills & Boon. A woman with a tormented past and desperate for a connection. Confected misunderstandings that lead to completely unnecessary plot twists and turns. And while the author managed to avoid culture appropriation, the indigenous characters were nothing more than background to the all-white cast of lead characters.
It was just okay. It wasn’t less than okay. It wasn’t more than okay. It’s not the kind of book you will read twice. It’s not the kind of book you will remember fondly. It’s not the kind of book you will remember much about at all after a few months. It’s good writing lost in a poor plot. And it’s a shame.
2.5 stars
January 16, 2018
This novel slowly drew me in with premise of a family secret, the descriptions of the ‘Other Australia’, and a sense of just wanting to know the outcome of the unfolding love story. Snip, an artist in her early 30’s inherits a sum of money from her grandmother along with instructions regarding searching out her father who is in the Northern Territory. Snip employs a driver, as she needs to learn how to drive a manual, and we, the reader learn about her being taken by her father, spending her early years ‘on the run’ and how her drive to “move on” has shaped her life and her relationship with others.
Reading, once again, about the close relationship the Australian aborigines have with the land and their understanding of family, I am once again reminded how removed I am from the true spiritual owners of this land and am humbled.
Reading, once again, about the close relationship the Australian aborigines have with the land and their understanding of family, I am once again reminded how removed I am from the true spiritual owners of this land and am humbled.
November 7, 2025
I had not heard or read anything by this Australian author when I picked up this book at a library book sale. Snip, the main character, has been given a bequest of $30,000 to buy herself a car and find her father by her grandmother. Snip is a very nomadic artist flitting around the Outback, painting in different spots. She hires Dave to help drive her manual "ute" back to Alice Springs and then she leaves him there. She finds her father, Bud, soon. He had helped raise when he took her as child, raised her as a boy, and then returned her to her mother. She goes off to the desert with Bud in her new ute but they soon break down and are left to die out there. The author brings out the physical landscape of Australia very well and the complicated emotions of Snip, her father, Bud, and Dave very well. She brings out the goodness of Aborigines. I found it to be a very interesting book.
June 24, 2020
This book is a quick and excellent read that is one of Nikki Gemmell’s best books (Shiver being the other one). The main character is a painter who is the child of a violent and disastrous marriage and is torn between living life on her own terms, trying to satisfy her need for solitude that she needs to nourish her sense of creativity and also to obtain family approval from a violent and selfish father and distant mother. She also has to deal with her inner conflict resulting from her need for independence and wanting a relationship with a guy she meets who has a completely different family background. The Outback setting within an Aboriginal community where she spends part of her childhood is also very dramatic and makes this read quite compelling.
August 19, 2017
This was a great novel. Poetic and simple. Probably complex but simple story which I guess you can take at your own level. Not sure about artistic license re Australia as I don't live there. Some of medical bits seemed a bit untrue, although she did get medical advice so maybe I'm wrong ( many years since I practised in medicine). It makes you want to go walkabout.
November 28, 2019
Nikki Gemmell so perfectly portrays her protagonist with her beautiful, lyrical prose. I found myself falling in love with the strong yet vulnerable Snip who seemed to mirror in so many ways the land of which she become a daughter.
Nikki's writing is hypnotic and narcotic. the very first thing I did upon finishing this book was find another by Nikki
Nikki's writing is hypnotic and narcotic. the very first thing I did upon finishing this book was find another by Nikki
April 25, 2022
The story of a woman hopelessly entangled with expectation and her past thrives in the arid desert. There were moments I gasped aloud, and moments I had to put down the book to stop and think about what I'd just read. Another piece of Gemmell's writing that highlights Indigenous stories through a white womans eyes in a real, respectful way; a powerful read.
April 4, 2023
When I was 20 years old, I lived in a hippy commune in Alice Springs. I vividly recall my time there and felt a deep sense of being back there reading this book. I had a stint working very near an Aboriginal community way out in the bush then and fragments of my memories came back to me when I was immersed in Nikkei’s epic writing. Wow.
June 20, 2023
Between 2.5 and 3 stars for me. Read in French. I liked the depiction of nature/wilderness and Snip's relation to it (and to her own wilderness/"savagery"/want of freedom). I think most characters were very believable in all their complexities, even though I couldn't really relate with them (I am definitely not a "neophile", I had trouble understanding Snip, but I can respect that).
June 3, 2019
For the Pop Sugar challenge, I chose this book for a book with a piece of clothing or accessory on the cover.
October 7, 2019
In general, I liked this book quite a bit, but I felt the characters had random bursts of inconsistency.
December 4, 2019
It took me to the country side of Australia..😊
July 20, 2021
I started reading and promptly fell into this book. Love, love, loved it! So engrossing that I stayed up way too late because I didn’t want to leave this person and her life.
July 29, 2021
Alice was a title of one of Nevil Shute’s books ‘A Town like Alice’. The story is weird, strange, unclear but vaguely appealing, especially if you’ve read Shute’s books based in Australia.
Read
June 23, 2023DNF
January 19, 2025
I liked it. It's did a good job of showing how trauma can really mess up a family and that a caring community can help bring it back.
December 15, 2024
Excellent loved it 🙏
March 17, 2017
It didn't affect me like "with my body" but it kept me in. It's a sandy rough finish that leaves you needing a soothing tea afterward, but that's her style.
February 3, 2011
I am not a Nikki Gemmell newbie. I first discovered her a few years ago when I stumbled across her book The Bride Stripped Bare. I liked that book enough to track down more of Gemmell’s work. Cleave is the third novel I’ve read by her.
Cleave is the story of Snip Freeman, a 30 year old Australian artist. The novel opens with Snip making a long journey from Sydney to Alice Springs in Central Australia. Snip’s grandmother has died and left Snip enough money to buy an ute (which I gather is the Australian version of a pick up truck), but she has one request: Snip has to return to Alice and find Bud. Bud, as it turns out, is Snip’s father. Finding him isn’t a problem: Snip knows where he is.
Alice (and Bud) have an emotional hold on Snip. Well, lots of things have an emotional hold on Snip. She’s prickly and needy and in desperate need of the answers to some of the big questions of her life.
The distance between Sydney and Alice Springs is roughly 2700km and Snip doesn’t want to make the journey alone so she puts an ad in the paper: Girl plans ute, Sydney to Alice, share the lot, now. Dave is intrigued by the ad and ends up sharing the journey with Snip. Dave becomes a major player in Snip’s life. She’s always reckoned herself a free spirit, bouncing between friends, setting up makeshift studios wherever she lands. Although he’s slightly younger, Dave is settled and he wants Snip to settle, too.
Cleave means to break or come apart. Cleave is a story about fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, lovers. Although that might be familiar territory, Gemmell’s story is made new by her original and fresh prose and, for this Canadian at least, the unfamiliar terrain. Gemmell’s characters are intriguing, particularly Snip and her father. I think Gemmell’s a brave writer, too. She takes chances with her words and pushes the reader along ground that is often uncomfortable, but all the more rewarding because of it.
Cleave is the story of Snip Freeman, a 30 year old Australian artist. The novel opens with Snip making a long journey from Sydney to Alice Springs in Central Australia. Snip’s grandmother has died and left Snip enough money to buy an ute (which I gather is the Australian version of a pick up truck), but she has one request: Snip has to return to Alice and find Bud. Bud, as it turns out, is Snip’s father. Finding him isn’t a problem: Snip knows where he is.
Alice (and Bud) have an emotional hold on Snip. Well, lots of things have an emotional hold on Snip. She’s prickly and needy and in desperate need of the answers to some of the big questions of her life.
The distance between Sydney and Alice Springs is roughly 2700km and Snip doesn’t want to make the journey alone so she puts an ad in the paper: Girl plans ute, Sydney to Alice, share the lot, now. Dave is intrigued by the ad and ends up sharing the journey with Snip. Dave becomes a major player in Snip’s life. She’s always reckoned herself a free spirit, bouncing between friends, setting up makeshift studios wherever she lands. Although he’s slightly younger, Dave is settled and he wants Snip to settle, too.
Cleave means to break or come apart. Cleave is a story about fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, lovers. Although that might be familiar territory, Gemmell’s story is made new by her original and fresh prose and, for this Canadian at least, the unfamiliar terrain. Gemmell’s characters are intriguing, particularly Snip and her father. I think Gemmell’s a brave writer, too. She takes chances with her words and pushes the reader along ground that is often uncomfortable, but all the more rewarding because of it.
April 24, 2020
Phillipa “Snip” Freeman is a 30 year old artist and a wanderer, tough and in control of her world. She is also the product of a broken home. A bequest from her grandmother sends her across Australia in search of her wayward father Bud, who has been estranged from the family for twenty years.
Snip advertises for a travelling companion and meets Dave a geologist, who makes her aware of her rootlessness and challenges her lifestyle. She unwillingly falls in love with him, but her independent streak leads her to leave him behind, and they part.
When Snip eventually finds Bud, she takes off with him on a disastrous road trip that leaves them stranded in the desert with a punctured gas tank and few supplies. The experience of the trip and interactions with her father help her to realize how much her parents have shaped the person she has become. She has inherited their recklessness and their tendency to not think things through, and she is also leading a solitary life just like they did.
After surviving the disastrous trip with her father, she decides she wants a more permanent and settled life with Dave.
This is one part romance, one part family drama and one part a search for identity. The plot is somewhat contrived and you know from the beginning where it will lead. But there are lovely descriptions of the vast Australian desert landscape that serve as a backdrop to the story.
Snip advertises for a travelling companion and meets Dave a geologist, who makes her aware of her rootlessness and challenges her lifestyle. She unwillingly falls in love with him, but her independent streak leads her to leave him behind, and they part.
When Snip eventually finds Bud, she takes off with him on a disastrous road trip that leaves them stranded in the desert with a punctured gas tank and few supplies. The experience of the trip and interactions with her father help her to realize how much her parents have shaped the person she has become. She has inherited their recklessness and their tendency to not think things through, and she is also leading a solitary life just like they did.
After surviving the disastrous trip with her father, she decides she wants a more permanent and settled life with Dave.
This is one part romance, one part family drama and one part a search for identity. The plot is somewhat contrived and you know from the beginning where it will lead. But there are lovely descriptions of the vast Australian desert landscape that serve as a backdrop to the story.
January 15, 2016
I'm guessing this is one of those stories meant for teenagers who are looking for themselves. Those ones who are also very freakin' confused about their sexuality and what they seriously want to be when they grow up. If you have any of those things figured out, even the slightest, you will not be able to relate to the characters. I have nothing against young women wandering, I just don't seem to have any need for it myself.
March 20, 2013
This book was painful to read, but I hate not finishing a book so I made myself slog through it. I chose to read it after enjoying The Bride Stripped Bare, but found few similarities. The characters were all unlikeable and selfish, the content was extremely dull and I did not really care what happened to any of them. Very disappointing.
January 18, 2014
This book fell well short of her previous novel 'Shiver'.
I think that for me, this book highlighted that I require more than one storyline to be running in a book. This was so very one dimensional in that sense.
It was surprising to learn Snip's age, as at first I thought she was in her late teens.
I was also very let down with the ending.
I think that for me, this book highlighted that I require more than one storyline to be running in a book. This was so very one dimensional in that sense.
It was surprising to learn Snip's age, as at first I thought she was in her late teens.
I was also very let down with the ending.
January 19, 2016
This book is quite simply a treasure, and while following the wanderings of a semi-lost soul through the exquisite light of the outback, presents one of the most profound character changes I can recall witnessing. It is a coming to terms, a tale of acceptance, within the wide, harsh wilderness where she feels most at home.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews