Will I love A Most Peculiar Act?

This was one of the first books I read at university. I admired Marie Munkara’s gruff voice and the way she delicately balanced satirical humour and dark truths.

Juxtaposing the voices of colonial guards and officers with 16-year-old Aboriginal mother, Sugar, lends this novel a messy complexity which is always compelling.

At the beginning, I found it easy to mock and deride the white colonial officers: the overtly racist Drew, the well-meaning but exploitative Ralphie, the bumbling, inadequate Hump with his mistaken ambitions of grandeur. I thought I’d figured it all out, that I’d grasped all of Munkara’s meaning. 

But… show more.