Untethered (Hayley Katzen, Ventura)

In 1989 academic Hayley Katzen moved from apartheid South Africa to Australia. In Sydney she taught and worked in law and enjoyed the comparative safety and community of the city and its queer scene. A chance encounter at a rural party leads Katzen to meet and fall in love with Jen, a cattle farmer on the North Coast of NSW and, after years of trying to keep her love- and work-lives separate, Katzen makes the decision to quit her job and live full-time on the farm with Jen. In this brutal new world of bushfires, calf castration and animal production, Katzen embarks on a journey to discover the true meaning of home. Untethered is full of rich descriptions of outback Australia and sheds light on both queer farmers and the farming community in general—lives that aren’t often discussed in literature. However, Katzen’s story falls short in its delivery. With noticeable gaps in the narrative and paragraphs entirely made up of rhetorical questions, the book ends up at times reading more like a journal than a memoir. Katzen’s past before her tree-change is only hinted at with brief mentions of family estrangement, abuse and mental health issues. While these issues may be confronting, without understanding the person that Katzen was before her life-altering move it’s difficult to appreciate her transformative journey.

Chloë Cooper is a freelance writer and a bookseller

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