Tangara

 

A real antique fiction today, first published in 1960, much reprinted and much awarded, and I've just realised that it's Edel Wignell's copy that I bought in the secondhand bookshop! Isn't it a lovely cover? This edition is from 1972.

Nan Chauncy's Tangara is a problematic read today, but in its time it was extraordinarily sympathetic to the Tasmanian Aboriginal people, who were widely regarded even then as 'extinct.' It's a time slip story of sorts, and along with young Lexie, we see the original Tasmanians living in their old way -- hunting, sharing, telling stories, playing, bickering. Chauncy carefully researched her subject before writing to get the details right, but of course the biggest fact of all is wrong: the Tasmanian Aborigines did not 'die out,' despite the best efforts of the colonists. This assumption casts a melancholy, mourning air over the entire story, but most of the (white) characters are horrified by what happened and generally sympathetic to the 'vanished people' and quite honest about their appalling treatment. There is even a massacre, though it occurs off-screen, but the lonely figure of Merrina, always waiting for her people to return, is truly heart-breaking.

I wouldn't recommend Tangara to children these days, but it's not a bad read for adults, especially readers who want to be reassured that a) there were people who cared, even in the bad old days, and b) that we have travelled a long way since then.