'Abandoned by her mother and only occasionally visited by her secretive father, Justine is raised by her pop, a man tormented by visions of the Burma Railway. Justine finds sanctuary in Pop's chooks and The Choke, where the banks of the Murray River are so narrow it seems they might touch - a place of staggering natural beauty. But the river can't protect Justine from danger. Her father is a criminal, and the world he exposes her to can be lethal.
'Justine is overlooked and underestimated, a shy and often silent observer of her chaotic world. She learns that she has to make sense of it on her own. She has to find ways to survive so much neglect. She must hang on to friendship when it comes, she must hide when she has to, and ultimately she must fight back.
'The Choke is a brilliant, haunting novel about a child navigating an often dark and uncaring world of male power and violence, in which grown-ups can't be trusted and comfort can only be found in nature. This compassionate and claustrophobic vision of a child in danger and a society in trouble celebrates above all the indomitable nature of the human spirit.' (Synopsis)
Dedication: For Marc, with love and gratitude.
In memory of Aileen
Epigraph: "Sapere aude" Horace, First Book of Letters
A Conversation with Sofie Laguna
Chris Gordon
(interviewer),
2017
23466963
2017
single work
podcast
interview
'Hear our events manager Chris Gordon in conversation with Miles Franklin Literary Award winner, Sofie Laguna, about her new novel, The Choke.' (Production summary)
'Unless you’re Henry James you need a particular confidence to create an adult work with a child narrator. Sofie Laguna is something of a specialist in this area. The Eye of the Sheep, winner of the 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award, was narrated by an unusual little boy called Jimmy finding his way through a precarious life. The Choke features a young narrator called Justine finding her way past an inheritance of brutality and loss.' (Introduction)
'Sofie Laguna was a successful writer of children’s and YA fiction before publishing her first novel for adults, One Foot Wrong, in 2008. Readers of that startling debut, or of her 2015 Miles Franklin Award winner The Eye of the Sheep, will find many familiar themes in her latest novel The Choke. Each is concerned with the struggle of a vulnerable child to define and to protect him- or herself in a grown-up world; each an astute, affecting exploration of the particular pressures that parental neglect and violence place on the children who observe and absorb it. Laguna’s subject matter is often confronting, the families she depicts beset by discord or economic hardship, her young protagonists forced to fend for themselves in harrowing circumstances. Yet while she takes her readers into what is very dark territory, exploring the effects of serious trauma and abuse, her novels are not bleak. The strength of her young narrators, their resilience and imagination, allows her to retain a crucial element of hope – even the promise of redemption – in the face of enormous suffering.' (Introduction)
'The Choke is full of holes. I mean that literally, which is also to say (since we are talking about a novel) symbolically. It contains any number of insinuating references to wounds, ditches, gaps, and voids. The primary implication of these can be grasped if one recalls that ‘nothing’ was Elizabethan slang for female genitalia. Sofie Laguna’s narrator, a ten-year-old girl named Justine Lee, who has a nervous habit of thrusting her tongue in and out of the gap created by her missing teeth, is constantly being reminded that she has ‘no thing’. In the masculine world of knives and guns she inhabits, the secondary status this lack bestows upon her is reinforced in all kinds of subtle and not-so-subtle ways, often with an element of innuendo and menace. On the very first page, one of her two older brothers threatens to shoot her with his slingshot in the ‘hole’ of her gummy mouth if she smiles. Shortly after a scene in which she is attacked by an aggressive rooster named Cockyboy, which slashes her face, the idea that her femaleness is not simply a deficiency but a form of mutilation is made explicit when Jamie, the teenaged scion of the rival Worrley family, attacks her on the way to school, having first taunted her by grabbing at her skirt and calling out ‘show us your scar’.' (Introduction)
'Miles Franklin-winner Sofie Laguna has developed such a characteristic literary style that it’s easy to forget that The Choke is only her third novel for adults. Here, her child narrator is Justine Lee, who is 10 in the early ’70s when the story starts. Justine has severe dyslexia, a crippling shyness and lives with her pop in poverty and neglect on a bush block, called Pop’s Three, on the banks of the Murray where it narrows (the choke of the title). She’s surrounded by misogyny and peril: from her Pop, an unpredictable former prisoner of the Japanese; from her two older half-brothers, who live close; from her violent, criminal father, Ray, who visits occasionally; and from a nearby estranged branch of the family, who have good reason to hate Justine’s.' (Introduction)
'Miles Franklin winner Sofie Laguna fought off her fears to write the most disturbing novel of her life. She talks to Stephen Romei
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … Charles Dickens may have a trademark on that line but other writers have artistic authority to borrow it now and then. When actress turned writer Sofie Laguna won the 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award for The Eye of the Sheep, the night was marked not with Bollinger but with barf.' (Introduction)
'Sofie Laguna was a successful writer of children’s and YA fiction before publishing her first novel for adults, One Foot Wrong, in 2008. Readers of that startling debut, or of her 2015 Miles Franklin Award winner The Eye of the Sheep, will find many familiar themes in her latest novel The Choke. Each is concerned with the struggle of a vulnerable child to define and to protect him- or herself in a grown-up world; each an astute, affecting exploration of the particular pressures that parental neglect and violence place on the children who observe and absorb it. Laguna’s subject matter is often confronting, the families she depicts beset by discord or economic hardship, her young protagonists forced to fend for themselves in harrowing circumstances. Yet while she takes her readers into what is very dark territory, exploring the effects of serious trauma and abuse, her novels are not bleak. The strength of her young narrators, their resilience and imagination, allows her to retain a crucial element of hope – even the promise of redemption – in the face of enormous suffering.' (Introduction)
'Unless you’re Henry James you need a particular confidence to create an adult work with a child narrator. Sofie Laguna is something of a specialist in this area. The Eye of the Sheep, winner of the 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award, was narrated by an unusual little boy called Jimmy finding his way through a precarious life. The Choke features a young narrator called Justine finding her way past an inheritance of brutality and loss.' (Introduction)
