The Great Undoing (Sharlene Allsopp, Ultimo)

Imagine a completely digital future, with people connected via nanotechnology, attaining ultimate convenience at the price of absolute surveillance—good for people who like where they are, bad for those who don’t. Scarlet Friday is a Truth Teller who delves into history to reveal details hidden by malice or ignorance. Raised in a Bundjalung community in northern New South Wales, she knows better than most the value of her work, even though she cannot face the unanswered questions of her childhood. Then the servers and the satellites fail, taking with them all connected infrastructure. Trapped in London, Scarlet befriends an older man who claims to know what has happened—and that he can reverse it if he can get to Australia, where the technology originated. Scarlet records her experiences on the pages of an old and faded history book, overwriting the old world with the new. With the eye of a Truth Teller, she examines these two worlds and her places as observer and observed. Sharlene Allsopp’s The Great Undoing is a remarkable book that reaches back into the early 20th century and forwards into the future to examine discontinuities in recorded histories, and the resonances of this within the lives of First Nations people. Allsopp’s style is lyrical and almost poetic, even when describing ugliness. The Great Undoing joins the works of authors like Octavia Butler and Claire G Coleman, who use the light of what could be to illuminate what actually is.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Stefen Brazulaitis has been a bookseller with a special interest in science fiction and fantasy for 30 years and is the owner of Stefen's Books in Perth WA. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Friday Unlocked reviews Reviews