The term is part of the identity of the landowners and their relationship to the land. In The Grass Castle, Karen Viggers looks at the lives of two women, apart in age, but both with rural backgrounds and carrying damage from earlier experiences.
The story tells of their creation of their own grass castles.
Abby is a doctoral student following a herd of kangaroos in a national park. She is cautious in her opinions, tries to stick with evidence and uses qualifiers in her discussions on topical subjects, and this brings her into sharp opposition with Cameron, a journalist who puts up arguments in order to test opinions.
Working in the park evokes memories of her upbringing in the bush, horse riding with her mother and the shock of her mother's death. She finds her father's withdrawal into himself after that difficult to forgive, and has a strained relationship with her stepmother.
Daphne is a widow who regrets the circumstances of having to sell land to the Government for a national park, and the steady decline in health of her husband.
She lives with her daughter and son-in-law and is not comfortable in the city. The two meet and move through the issues that have been so complicated for them.
Central to the progress is the tensions over a proposed cull of kangaroos in the national park. The continuum of views around this and the behaviours they produce creates the setting for some pace in the story towards the end.
All characters give background to the two women and their journey. The use of the kangaroo and the issues of conservation is a clever device that brings some topicality to The Grass Castle. The central characters are not as rounded as those in Viggers' earlier novel, The Lightkeeper's Wife, and are often overshadowed by the portrayal of the grandeur and power of the Australian outback.
- Willie Campbell is a Dunedin educator.
