The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood

The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood (Allen & Unwin)

Judges' Comments

The Natural Way of Things is a powerful allegory of gender trouble. Ten young women, who have been pilloried for misbehaving as women and subject to punishment and violence on account of their sexuality, are imprisoned on a remote rural property encircled by a high electric fence, where they are subject to a monotonous regime of hard labour and the taunts of two bullying male guards. The Kafkaesque narrative, which withholds the realist details of backstory and temporal verisimilitude, is parable-like in its minimalism and the moral force of its ending.

This original book challenges the boundaries of Australian literary realism. The intense momentum and the taut vernacular of the prose carry the reader through the bleak world of the prison camp, reflecting entrenched norms regarding women in the contemporary world. But these women are not without hope or agency. In the midst of privation and surveillance, they fashion survival through discovering their own psychical and physical resources.