'It’s 1969 and a remote Australian coastal town is poised to play its part in the Moon Landing. An influx of expat NASA employees working at the tracking station on the sand dune just out of town shakes things up. A pink and grey galah cockatoo emerges from a cage at the back door of the Kelly household and uncovers some tightly-held secrets. She threads these playfully through the story of her own rising and falling fortunes in what we call the lucky country.' (Publications summary)
Dedication: To the memory of my father Brian Sorensen
'With an analysis of Tracy Sorensen's The Lucky Galah (2018), I ask how we can respect and acknowledge Aboriginal ownership and sovereignty without appropriation, exoticization, or trivialization. I suggest that Sorensen does this in her novel by imagining the unknowable voice of an animal. The novel uses the viewpoint of a galah and the story of an Aboriginal woman who adopts her. Using Gerald Vizenor's idea of survivance, I discuss how animal voices offer a way to "walk with" other people and species through the devices of speculative fiction, continuing my work with science fiction that imagines ways of exchanging an acknowledgment of mutual personhood without perfect understanding of either one by the other, employing what I call the amborg gaze.' (Publication abstract)
'In 1969, in a quintessentially Australian town on the remote north-west coast, the locals prepare to celebrate their role in the moon landing. In 2000, as the townsfolk brace themselves for a cyclone, Lucky, this novel’s pink and grey narrator, uses transmissions from a satellite dish tuned to galah frequency to make sense of what she saw and heard from her cage in the 1960s. Quirky? Unbelievable? Tracy Sorensen’s The Lucky Galah upsets preconceptions in a smart and charming account of a human population on the cusp of radical social transformation. (Introduction)
'There’s much more to Tracy Sorensen’s impressive debut than just an original premise.'
'Tracy Sorensen's 'The Lucky Galah' (Picador, March) recounts the lives of ordinary Australians from the 1960s until the 2000s, as narrated by a galah called Lucky. The conceit is handled 'with a deft touch so that the characters come to life as vividly as the ideas', writes reviewer Lorien Kaye. She spoke to the author.' (Introduction)
'In 1969, in a quintessentially Australian town on the remote north-west coast, the locals prepare to celebrate their role in the moon landing. In 2000, as the townsfolk brace themselves for a cyclone, Lucky, this novel’s pink and grey narrator, uses transmissions from a satellite dish tuned to galah frequency to make sense of what she saw and heard from her cage in the 1960s. Quirky? Unbelievable? Tracy Sorensen’s The Lucky Galah upsets preconceptions in a smart and charming account of a human population on the cusp of radical social transformation. (Introduction)
'Tracy Sorensen's 'The Lucky Galah' (Picador, March) recounts the lives of ordinary Australians from the 1960s until the 2000s, as narrated by a galah called Lucky. The conceit is handled 'with a deft touch so that the characters come to life as vividly as the ideas', writes reviewer Lorien Kaye. She spoke to the author.' (Introduction)
'There’s much more to Tracy Sorensen’s impressive debut than just an original premise.'
'With an analysis of Tracy Sorensen's The Lucky Galah (2018), I ask how we can respect and acknowledge Aboriginal ownership and sovereignty without appropriation, exoticization, or trivialization. I suggest that Sorensen does this in her novel by imagining the unknowable voice of an animal. The novel uses the viewpoint of a galah and the story of an Aboriginal woman who adopts her. Using Gerald Vizenor's idea of survivance, I discuss how animal voices offer a way to "walk with" other people and species through the devices of speculative fiction, continuing my work with science fiction that imagines ways of exchanging an acknowledgment of mutual personhood without perfect understanding of either one by the other, employing what I call the amborg gaze.' (Publication abstract)
