“The aftershocks from 1996 continued, year after year, often in the life of the individual more devastating than the Port Arthur massacre itself. Yet always the subsequent tragedies could be traced back to that unspeakable Sunday.”
Blurb
The front cover of Paradise Earth.
Coming home to Tasman Peninsula with her Northern Irish partner, Ruth journeys into her own psychic trauma as well as that projected onto the raw, monumental coast. When Ruth’s brother John helps his fourteen-year-old son apply for a firearm’s permit – almost two and a half decades after Port Arthur – they risk condemning those who do not remember the past to repeat it.
A Port Arthur survivor, Marina has returned to the Peninsula with her brother Moon to pack up Doo-No-Harm, the family holiday home, after their mother’s death. Marina’s personhood was so violated by her early life experience that she has been left an angry She-wolf about to set out on the hunt. In a convoy of duck rescuers, the siblings head for a confrontation with shooters on the wetland.
In these lives choreographed by trauma, damage and the ramifications of wilful forgetfulness, transformation can only occur after an extremely painful lesson.
Review
Paradise Earth is a whirlwind of emotion. It does not have much ‘action’; instead, the focus is on the characters’ personal journeys, as well as their thoughts and feelings.
It is well-written. The descriptions are detailed and vivid. The dialogue is believable, but it is wooden at times.
The gunman of the Port Arthur massacre appears as a difficult youth in the novel. Based on the non-fiction books I have read about the massacre and the gunman, the ‘difficultness’ is accurate. I commend Amy Barker, the author of Paradise Earth, for sticking to the facts and not making him come across as deranged.
This may sound weird, but reading Paradise Earth made me want to live a quiet, secluded life on the Tasman Peninsula.
Paradise Earth is essentially a novel about human beings deal with trauma. If the Port Arthur massacre has had a negative affect on you, then it is not for you.
Amy Barker
Amy Barker feels privileged to be a full-time writer.
Amy Barker.
She holds degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing. Her debut novel, Omega Park, won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Best Emerging Author.
Paradise Earth is her second novel.
Amy is uniquely poised to write about the terrible events that took place at Port Arthur in 1996. While not at Port Arthur itself on the day of the massacre, she spent her formative years on the Tasman Peninsula, in close association with both victims and members of the gunman’s family.
To write the novel, she moved back to the Tasman Peninsula temporarily and worked from nine to five, only stopping to eat and bathe. She “basically started each draft of the novel from scratch”.
Technical information
Paradise Earth, Stormbird Press 2020, 318pp, ISBN 9781925856224, paperback.
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