CARPENTARIA – QUOTES

1) Alexis Wright’s
“All the main characters of this book are like islands of self-sufficiency that act alone. (…) The book asks what
becomes of the islands we have created, of communities, our places and ourselves.”

2) Epigraph about the 4 natural elements

water and earth and fire and air - Seamus HEANEY ‘The First Words’

3) Chapter 1 - From time immemorial - p.1 - incipit – in CAPITAL LETTERS - nation, conflict
« A NATION CHANTS, BUT WE KNOW YOUR STORY ALREADY […] THE GATES OF HEAVEN WILL OPEN BUT NOT
FOR THE WICKED. |…] BLACK GIRLS FROM A DISTANT COMMUNITY WHERE THE WHITE DOVE BEARING AN
OLIVE BRANCH NEVER LANDS. ARMAGEDDON BEGINS HERE.»

4) p.4 - the dump and the White v Aboriginal

“They had lived in a human dumping-ground next to the town tip since the day Normal Phantom was born.
(…) The descendants of the pioneer families, who claimed ownership of the town, said the Aboriginal was
really not part of the town at all.”

5) p.7 - memories ab « before » ab Abor people

« the museum of scarce memorabilia »

6) p.9 - changing name of river ab Waanyi language

« the river only had one name from the beginning of time. It was Wangala.

7) p.10 - history’s traces – narrator to the reader

« There was no tangible evidence of [the Phantoms’] existence. […] Even Uncle Micky’s collection […]
cartridges used in the massacre of the local tribes [But no tourists go to Micky’s museum. […] That’s fighting
for you. Fighting, fighting all the time for a bit of land and a little bit of recognition. »

8) p.11 - telling stories ; old people

« The old Gulf country men and women who took our besieged memories to the grave might just climb out of
the mud and tell you the real story of what happened here. »

9) Chapter 2 – Angel Day – incipit in CAPITAL LETTERS - hope in children, old people and ghosts, story-telling
« A CHILD ASKED IF ANYONE COULD FIND HOPE.
THEY NO LONGER KNEW WHAT HOPE WAS. […] LUCKILY, THE GHOSTS IN THE MEMORIES OF THE OLD FOLK
WERE LISTENING, AND SAID ANYONE CAN FIND HOPE IN THE STORIES : THE BIG STORIES AND THE LITTLE
ONES IN BETWEEN. SO... »

p.16 about Angel Day and Norm

“the ponderous, thinking people among the Pricklebush jumped to her defence, Who was Normal to say he
wanted to live elsewhere, under a log with a bit of rag, worse than a dog?”

6) p.17 about Norm ; him and Angel Day

described as having “inherited his father’s memory of the sea”

7) “He said there was too much water under the bridge to have to go around fighting his wife all the time. (…)
She accused him of coming home smelling like a catfish but that didn’t stop child number seven being born:
Kevin.”

8) p.30
“The war of the dump burst apart the little world of the Phantom and their related families. (…) Every family
had to know the story of the past. Know, to go about their separate ways, by reclaiming land from fighting long
ago.” (p. 30)

9) p.49 about Elias Smith

“can be equated with the Dreamtime world” (p. 49)

10) p.78 about Elias’s capacities

“acquire other people’s memories. They gave him their imagination. Through adopting their childhood
memories as his own, he was able to close the gap on the past he could not remember.” (p. 78)

11) p.97 about Norm telling stories

“Norm repeated the story of his father, exactly as his father told it, copying his old voice, which seemed to
comfort the old people, and members of the family: they stood around the front yard and listened.” (p. 97)

12) “He made people wish they were there when it really happened. He made them feel that it was better to
have been alive in the times of the real people, his ancestors.” (p. 99)

13) p.113 about Kevin’s sisters beating him

ironically perceived by his three sisters as a way of restoring “some order to their lives.”

14) p.260 about Norm’s capacities

“see signs like neon lights sitting on signposts jutting out from the ocean” (p. 260)

15) p.355 about Will

« Norm Phantom did not help the senior detective either, since he insisted that someone named Will Phantom
was no relative of theirs, never was, and never would be. »

16) p.385 about Will

“Will closed his eyes and saw the tremendous fury of the winds gathering up the seas, and clouds carrying the
enormous bodies of spiritual beings belonging to other worlds. Country people, old people, said it was the
sound of the great spiritual ancestors roaring out of the dusty, polluted sea all of the time nowadays. Will
believed this. Everyone clearly saw what the spirits saw.” (p. 385)

17) p.423 about Mozzie Fishman and his dead sons

“Up ahead, they heard the cavern echoing with the Fishman’s voice, bouncing from wall to wall, penetrating
their blood, saying goodbye to his sons. Wishing them well in their new world. Be good boys. He would put his
own affairs in order, then he would be coming back to them, very soon. ‘Luke Fishman, Tristrum Fishman, and
you too, Aaron Ho Kum.’ He explained he had adopted this dead boy as his own flesh and blood forever,
brother to Luke and Tristrum.” (p. 423)

18) p.466 Will’s vision about Norm and Elias

“He had been there before and watched his father in exactly the same way. In the same place. Norm and Elias
had taken him there fishing.” (p. 466)

19) p.467 about Mozzie Fisman to Will

“Even though the Fishman never went to sea, he mentioned an itinerary of site places along the coast for
making storms and counter storms powerful enough to wipe out the entire enemy” (p. 467)

20) p.477 about Will

“He developed a keen eye for the movement of the stars, staying awake to sing the Fishman’s ceremonial song
cycles all night, from the raising of the star across the eastern horizon to the setting of the big maliwi star in
the west. Then he would sleep. These were the rhythms of his life which he lived through like lines of poetry.”
(p. 477)

21) p.499 about Norm and Bala

“It was a mystery, but there was so much song wafting off the watery land, singing the country afresh as they
walked hand in hand out of town, down the road, Westside, to home.”