Issue Details: First known date: 2021... 2021 Dark Shapes : Lucy Neave’s Refreshing New Novel
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'Halfway through Lucy Neave’s new novel Believe in Me, there is an astonishing scene in which an orphaned foal is dressed in the skin of a newly dead foal, the skewbald coat threaded with baling twine and the strings knotted under the throat and chest. Disguised in this fleshy coat, strands of bloody muscle still clinging to it, the foal is presented hopefully to its foster mother. The novel’s main protagonist, Bet, is sceptical: ‘It’s condescending: as if a mare could be fooled by putting her dead foal’s skin on another foal.’ Sure enough, the grieving mare rejects the starving foal, stamping her hooves and moving around uneasily in the stable. Later that night, when Bet goes to check on the animals, she finds them nestled together: ‘Dark shapes, they moved together, away from me, as though they’d been startled from a dream.’ Stunned at this unexpected communion, Bet retreats into her own solitude: ‘I turned off the light, bolted the door and walked back through dew-soaked grass to bed, seeing again the mare and foal, nose to tail. They had no need of me.’' (Introduction)

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  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Book Review no. 435 September 2021 22811779 2021 periodical issue

    'From Plato to plutocrats, the September issue of ABR brings together the best and worst of the cultural moment. In our cover feature, Joel Deane casts his eye over the ‘ugly truth’ of Facebook’s contemptuous exploitation of users, while in a thought experiment inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin, Elizabeth Oliver identifies more worthy candidates for space travel than Branson and Bezos. Megan Clement reports from Paris on the pass sanitaire and Diane Stubbings reviews Peter Doherty’s plague-year dispatches. Sheila Fitzpatrick is our Critic of the Month and was a judge in this year’s Calibre Prize, for which Anita Punton’s ‘May Day’, printed in this issue, came runner-up. We also feature reviews of new fiction by Jennifer Mills, Colm Tóibín, and Laurent Binet, and new poetry by Toby Fitch, John Hawke, and Song Lin – as well as much, much more!' (Publication summary)

     

    2021
    pg. 18
Last amended 1 Sep 2021 09:10:35
18 https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2021/september-2021-no-435/967-september-2021-no-435/8209-alice-nelson-reviews-believe-in-me-by-lucy-neave Dark Shapes : Lucy Neave’s Refreshing New Novelsmall AustLit logo Australian Book Review
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