Robbie Arnott’s much-anticipated third novel, Limberlost, feels recognisably steeped in the writer’s usual literary preoccupations, with a couple of significant points of difference. Following 2018’s Flames and 2020’s The Rain Heron, Limberlost feels less self-consciously clever, less busy, less ambitious, but entirely more honest. If Arnott’s previous offerings have been a stage performance, Limberlost feels more like having a beer at the pub with a friend.
The novel tells the story of Ned West, a young man who lives on his family orchard in the Tamar Valley. Ned is trying to help keep the West world together while his brothers are at war, but beneath this preoccupation he has a secret: a longing for the freedom he has only ever found on the open water. Spanning decades, Limberlost explores the human relationship to land and sea, the power of the natural world to captivate, delight and terrify, and the ties of the human heart. It is simple, lyrical and utterly sublime.
There are, of course, the usual hallmarks that we might now come to expect from a Robbie Arnott novel: characters bounce back and forth across the geography of Tasmania with chaotic abandon, their relationships with animals reveal both the tenderness and savagery of humanity and the natural world, and there are lots and lots of gum trees. Crucially, Arnott’s virtuosic construction of the written word remains very much intact. The deceptively simple musicality of his language sounds with a pitch just as resonant as it has been in anything else he has written so far, and the result is a novel that is similarly unforgettable.
Limberlost is ultimately a tale about family, ambition and memory. Impressively, it does not suffer from Arnott’s commitment to step away from the broader mythology evident in his wider oeuvre. The depth of connection created between the reader, Ned, and all who surround the orchard of Limberlost is as profound as the portrayal of any of the broad cast of characters in Flames, and his protagonist’s relationship with an injured quoll is as moving as anything that occurs between the humans of The Rain Heron and its titular mythical creature.
With "Limberlost", Arnott undeniably secures his position as the most significant Tasmanian novelist of his generation.
It is impossible not to admire the way in which Arnott continues to reinvent himself. With each novel, he takes a few steps in a new direction – always with the unmistakable hallmarks and expression that have helped make him so beloved as a Tasmanian novelist, but also with something fresh each time.
In Limberlost, we recognise a writer who is not afraid to get his hands dirty, to keep himself grounded, and whose evolving literary style mirrors the novel’s themes of finding joy and satisfaction in simplicity. His work has a freshness that has always been uniquely modern, but this book’s messages and thematic underpinnings ultimately return us to a life that is much simpler; where we look to the forests, the waves and human connection.
With Limberlost, Arnott undeniably secures his position as the most significant Tasmanian novelist of his generation. As he proves himself a cut above, it is both ironic and perfect that his writing reminds us that the only things that really matter are not those that separate us, but those that bring us together: nature, love, and blood.
Lyndon Riggall is a northern Tasmanian writer and English teacher at Launceston College and co-host, with Annie Warburton, of the Tamar Valley Writers’ Festival Podcast. His first picture book for children, Becoming Ellie, was published by Forty South in 2019. He can be found at www.lyndonriggall.com.
