My first attempt to read this book led to me abandoning it, but I thought long and hard about doing that, and was hesitant to send it back to the library unfinished.
It is a raw, powerful, authentic portrayal of the damage done to Indigenous people by policies past and present that have been inflicted on them. It's the story of two drug-addicted, violent men, just released from prison for a crime that Blackie says he didn't commit. They are on a road-journey back to his Wiradjuri country, to reconnect with his family but also to have his revenge against the policeman who confected evidence against him and landed him in gaol.
I read more than half of the book, and was impressed by energy of the writing and the uncompromising style. Collis tells it like it is, apparently, see Cass Moriaty's review here at GR too. But it is unrelentingly grim, and although I have read a fair bit of Indigenous Lit and reviewed it on my blog, I had not long before read Kim Scott's True Country which had left me feeling nothing but despair about the state of Australia's Indigenous people, and I found myself turning away from Dancing Home to read other things. That could be a metaphor for what so many Australians do, to turn away, but for many of us it is not because we don't care, but because we feel utterly powerless. We have a government that includes people who refused to attend the Apology to the Stolen Generations and still refuses to listen. This government won't consider a Makarata, or an acknowledgment of sovereignty or the possibility of a treaty - and won't even implement the policies that are need for Closing the Gap to succeed.
But I came back to this book, and tried again when I was not feeling so disheartened. I finished it, and have scheduled my review for Indigenous Literature Week at ANZLitLovers.com (July8-15 2018), see https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/07/08/dancing-home-by-paul-collis-bookreview/. ( )