This intense yet sensitive dark comedy by Australian Goorie-European author Melissa Lucashenko (Mullumbimby ) never holds back in its portrayal of an Indigenous family in crisis… Crows talk and ancestors appear in this #ownvoices triumph about a family who find each other difficult to live with but impossible to stop loving. Too Much Lip 's stark honesty illuminates a version of Indigenous life, the crippling influence of colonization and the hard-won power of resilience and healing.
Shelf Awareness Starred Review
Because this is an authentic voice writing about what it means to be an Indigenous Australian in contemporary times, Lucashenko has taken on the tough issues that come with generational trauma – displacement, incarceration, abuse, racism, substance abuse, poverty, marginalisation. She doesn't shy away from any of it, nor is she preachy or bitter. She does it with humour, satire, dialogue with the kind of wild wit that can come with profanity. It is the voice of her people, her world. Measured and layered, the comedy leavens the tragedy. The great achievement is finding the balance; the redemption and understanding.
Too Much Lip ... brilliantly showcases Lucashenko’s talent for constructing funny, fraught and powerful stories driven by complex characters and compelling, true-to-life dramas.
What makes Too Much Lip not only engaging while reading, but memorable, is its tangible roots, which burrow deeply into the realities of Australian existence, through the author, this country, and now, this reader.”
Where to start with the delights of Too Much Lip? Lucashenko's dialog is absolutely true yet fabulously entertaining ... [and] each character is a gem.
In this vividly voiced novel, the ghosts of the past are never far away.
11/23/2020
A daughter gets caught in her Aboriginal Australian family’s complicated legacy in Indigenous Australian writer Lucashenko’s darkly funny U.S. debut. With 33-year-old Kerry Salter’s girlfriend in jail after a bipolar episode culminating in armed robbery, Kerry rides her motorcycle from Sydney to her small hometown of Durrongo, New South Wales, to visit her terminally ill grandfather. During a trip to a favorite swimming spot on her family’s ancestral land, Kerry learns crooked local official Jim Buckley plans to sell the land, which is owned by the state, to build a prison. Her older brother, washed-up soccer star Ken, launches a crusade to fight the land sale to soothe his rage over his younger brother, whom they call Black Superman, for getting ahead with a fancy government job in Sydney. An unexpected sexual relationship with a white man Kerry went to school with leads her to discover that her sister, Donna, who was presumed dead after going missing nearly 20 years ago, is in fact alive, passing for white, and working with Buckley. Kerry cajoles Donna into attending their mother’s birthday party, where Donna explodes with a secret that fractures the family just as their feud with Buckley reaches a fever pitch. With strong voices and kinetic prose, Lucashenko’s engrossing narrative speaks to the ongoing traumas of indigenous life in Australia. This deserves to make a splash. (Nov.)
This intense yet sensitive dark comedy by Australian Goorie-European author Melissa Lucashenko (Mullumbimby ) never holds back in its portrayal of an Indigenous family in crisis… Crows talk and ancestors appear in this #ownvoices triumph about a family who find each other difficult to live with but impossible to stop loving. Too Much Lip 's stark honesty illuminates a version of Indigenous life, the crippling influence of colonization and the hard-won power of resilience and healing. — Shelf Awareness Starred Review
Because this is an authentic voice writing about what it means to be an Indigenous Australian in contemporary times, Lucashenko has taken on the tough issues that come with generational trauma – displacement, incarceration, abuse, racism, substance abuse, poverty, marginalisation. She doesn't shy away from any of it, nor is she preachy or bitter. She does it with humour, satire, dialogue with the kind of wild wit that can come with profanity. It is the voice of her people, her world. Measured and layered, the comedy leavens the tragedy. The great achievement is finding the balance; the redemption and understanding. — Sydney Morning Herald
A daughter gets caught in her Aboriginal Australian family’s complicated legacy in Indigenous Australian writer Lucashenko’s darkly funny U.S. debut….With strong voices and kinetic prose, Lucashenko’s engrossing narrative speaks to the ongoing traumas of indigenous life in Australia. This deserves to make a splash. — Publishers Weekly
In this vividly voiced novel, the ghosts of the past are never far away. — Booklist
Too Much Lip 's language is addictively poetic, its cry for social justice real; it's powered by literary rocket fuel. — Zoë Morrison
This is not a story of suffering. This is a story of fighting back. … Vibrating with energy, both heartrending and hilarious, Too Much Lip offers a compelling multi-dimensional portrait of human strength in the face of human failure. ...We see the prismatic effects of colonialism’s violence and racism, damage cascading down through generations. [The author] deftly voices these characters’ pain and rage, but her humor also crackles across the pages. … The writing is consistently funny, but rather than serving to soften or balance, the humor instead lances and sharpens and reveals. — Chicago Review of Books
An award-winning Australian author explores family dysfunction and the legacy of colonial oppression in her American debut. . . . Original, honest, and surprisingly funny. — Kirkus Reviews
In Too Much Lip , Lucashenko has created an iconic Australian regional community, one that you would expect to stumble into while driving through the backroads of northern New South Wales. — Sydney Review of Books
Melissa Lucashenko is one of Australia’s most prolific contemporary writers, producing funny and gritty realist novels. The Miles Franklin award-winning Too Much Lip...is no exception. — The Australian
Too Much Lip is a worthy addition to the work of such original and passionate writers as Kim Scott and Alexis Wright. Talking crows, a talking shark: these are the surreal and symbolic bookends to a story that so often feels hopeless, yet is still the crucible of hope. — Australian Book Review
Too Much Lip ... brilliantly showcases Lucashenko’s talent for constructing funny, fraught and powerful stories driven by complex characters and compelling, true-to-life dramas. — Readings
Melissa Lucashenko's angry Australian Western is a thrilling read. — The Saturday Paper
Melissa Lucashenko writes about class and race in Australia with so much guts and heart and brains. — Kate Evans
“What makes Too Much Lip not only engaging while reading, but memorable, is its tangible roots, which burrow deeply into the realities of Australian existence, through the author, this country, and now, this reader.” — Mascara Literary Review
Where to start with the delights of Too Much Lip? Lucashenko's dialog is absolutely true yet fabulously entertaining ... [and] each character is a gem. — Spectrum
In Too Much Lip , Lucashenko has created an iconic Australian regional community, one that you would expect to stumble into while driving through the backroads of northern New South Wales.
Too Much Lip is a worthy addition to the work of such original and passionate writers as Kim Scott and Alexis Wright. Talking crows, a talking shark: these are the surreal and symbolic bookends to a story that so often feels hopeless, yet is still the crucible of hope.
Melissa Lucashenko is one of Australia’s most prolific contemporary writers, producing funny and gritty realist novels. The Miles Franklin award-winning Too Much Lip...is no exception.
In this vividly voiced novel, the ghosts of the past are never far away.
Too Much Lip 's language is addictively poetic, its cry for social justice real; it's powered by literary rocket fuel.
Melissa Lucashenko writes about class and race in Australia with so much guts and heart and brains.
Melissa Lucashenko's angry Australian Western is a thrilling read.
06/01/2020
Guilty of "too much lip," headstrong Kerry Salter is veering close to prison but still distancing herself from her Bundjalung homeland in Australia—until her father falls ill. She heads home on a stolen Harley, meaning to stay a day, but soon she enters the fight against building a prison on her family's spiritual homeland. Plus, a handsome white man steps into the picture. A Miles Franklin Award winner from Aboriginal writer Lukashenko, of Goorie and European heritage; with a 40,000-copy first printing.
Tamala Shelton narrates acclaimed Australian author Melissa Lucashenko's #ownvoices audiobook. Kerry returns home to see her challenging Aboriginal family in the fictional town of Durrongo, Australia. This semiautobiographical story pulsates with the tensions and pain of intergenerational trauma. Shelton expresses the unsettled emotional lives of Kerry and each of her family members, while conveying the significant but dysfunctional familial attachments that bind them. Indeed, Shelton will have listeners feeling as though they are eavesdropping on a family's intimate history. The sense of immersion is enhanced by her smooth shifts from English to words of the Yugambeh-Bundjalung Aboriginal language. While this is a demanding listen, Lucashenko's raw and provocative writing coupled with Shelton's expressive performance makes the audiobook a memorable experience. M.J. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
Tamala Shelton narrates acclaimed Australian author Melissa Lucashenko's #ownvoices audiobook. Kerry returns home to see her challenging Aboriginal family in the fictional town of Durrongo, Australia. This semiautobiographical story pulsates with the tensions and pain of intergenerational trauma. Shelton expresses the unsettled emotional lives of Kerry and each of her family members, while conveying the significant but dysfunctional familial attachments that bind them. Indeed, Shelton will have listeners feeling as though they are eavesdropping on a family's intimate history. The sense of immersion is enhanced by her smooth shifts from English to words of the Yugambeh-Bundjalung Aboriginal language. While this is a demanding listen, Lucashenko's raw and provocative writing coupled with Shelton's expressive performance makes the audiobook a memorable experience. M.J. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
2020-09-16
When Kerry Salter returns to her hometown in New South Wales, the first conversation she has is with a trio of crows. The fact that they critique her command of the Bundjalung language is exasperating. The fact that, in Durrongo, even the birds are up in her business is a grating reminder of why she left in the first place. But her ex-girlfriend is in prison for robbery, and Kerry is hoping to avoid the same fate. Also, her grandfather is dying, so…home it is—at least for a bit. Lucashenko is an Indigenous Australian author, and her writing is suffused with language that will be unfamiliar to most American readers, which makes settling into the narrative a bit of a challenge. This is not a criticism. Indeed, while Lucashenko was almost certainly not writing with the aim of alienating an audience half a world away, there’s something fitting in making interlopers feel a bit disoriented as they enter a world of generational trauma that is largely the result of colonialism. Readers willing to accept that they are outsiders in Durrongo will have the chance to explore a world that few of us know—and a landscape that is sacred to the people who live within it. Kerry left home to escape a family plagued by addiction and violence, but the place itself will always be her spiritual home. A developer’s plan to transform the resting place of her ancestors recapitulates the long history of settler-colonials taking and transforming the land on which Indigenous people live. It also gives shape to this novel’s plot as it gives Kerry a mission and her whole family a chance at a future that contains the best parts of the past.
Original, honest, and surprisingly funny.
