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y separately published work icon Sing Fox to Me single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2016... 2016 Sing Fox to Me
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In 1986, the year the Tasmanian tiger is officially declared extinct, fourteen-year-old Samson and his twin brother Jonah travel from the Sunshine Coast to the wild back country of west Tasmania to live on a mountain with a granddad they've never met. Clancy is a beat-up old man who breaks brumbies, hunts tigers, and has spent four years hunting for his missing daughter, River. The resentful, brooding Jonah, and sunny-tempered Samson, who has Down syndrome, feel very lost. The mountain isn't their home but they become entranced, in different ways, with their surroundings. While Samson finds delight all around, Jonah develops a dark obsession that ties in with Clancy's desire to bring River home. There's something out there in the bush, something that seems set on tearing this family to pieces. Sing Fox to Me is a story built from lost and stolen children, Tasmanian tigers, missing animals, Down syndrome and parents who run away. It is the symphony of three howling male voices, each hoping to find the right pack and live comfortably in their own skin.' (Publication summary)

Notes

  • Dedication: For Big Charlie and Little Charlie...and for Olive, Bel Bel and Bear.
  • Epigraph:

    I sing The Fox Came Out
    On a Chilly Night
    and Bobby, my favourite
    Mongoloid sings Fox to me.

    –Anne Sexton

Affiliation Notes

  • Writing Disability in Australia:

    Type of disability Down syndrome.
    Type of character Primary.
    Point of view Third person.
  • Thylacines and the Anthropocene

    Sing Fox to Me is set on a Tasmanian mountain property in 1986, the same year the thylacine was declared officially extinct and fifty years after the death of Benjamin, the last known captive thylacine. The thylacine's ecological loss is entangled thematically with Clancy Fox's grief at the disappearance of his daughter some years prior, as well as the frustrations of his twin grandsons Samson and Jonah, abandoned by their own father. 

    Tension between the thylacine's extinction and its haunting presence in the novel is symbolised most significantly by an heirloom pelt. The pelt is from a thylacine once captured on property and it memorialises the Fox family's dominance of their wild environment. Generations of Foxes have used the pelt to shift into hybrid human-thylacine figures, blurring boundaries between human and nonhuman subjectivities. 

    Ways of experiencing the external world and expressing inner worlds are also explored, particularly through protagonist Samson Fox—a character with Down syndrome—and his relationships with those around him. Louis Nowra's Into That Forest is another thylacine novel to consider such complexities, when two girls raised by thylacines struggle to communicate and adjust to social expectations on their return to the human spaces. 

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Mulgrave, Ashwood - Mulgrave area, Melbourne South East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Affirm Press , 2016 .
      image of person or book cover 2117178509172086140.jpeg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 266p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 28 January 2016
      ISBN: 9781922213679; 9781458733931

Other Formats

  • Also large print.

Works about this Work

Disability in Three Australian Gothic Novels : The Well, Sing Fox to Me and Lilian’s Story Liz Shek-Noble , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 37 no. 1 2022;

'The Gothic lends itself to critical examinations of disabled embodiment, yet this genre has ‘hitherto been largely ignored’ by disability studies scholars (Gregory 291). This essay redresses this omission by exploring disability in three Australian Gothic novels: Elizabeth Jolley's The Well (1986), Sarah Kanake's Sing Fox to Me (2016), and Kate Grenville's Lilian’s Story (1985). On initial glance, The Well and Lilian’s Story conform to the use of disability in the Gothic as a metaphor for social and psychological deviance. However, closer inspection of these novels and Sing Fox to Me demonstrates their resistance to the Gothic’s typical use of disability in phobic ways. Hester’s disability in The Well enables her to transcend the gender prescriptions of her patriarchal Australian community, even if it is initially constructed as a physiological sign of her disturbing possessiveness over Katherine. Against the ‘dramatic and unforgiving natural settings’ of the Tasmanian Gothic (Bullock 72), Sing Fox to Me interweaves Samson’s experience of Down syndrome with perennial themes of the genre including familial haunting and the intersection of past and present. Similar to The WellLilian’s Story shows the politically transformative nature of disabled embodiment, wherein the titular character’s fatness and ‘madness’ allow her to achieve self-realisation while defying the gender norms of her time. Ultimately, the three novels suggest that the use of disabled characters in some contemporary Australian Gothic narratives is clearing space for less-stereotypical portrayals of corporeal and psychological variation in this genre.' (Publication abstract)

y separately published work icon Sing Fox to Me by Sarah Kanake : Notes Fay Helfenbaum , Melbourne : CAE Book Group , 2018 13925807 2018 single work criticism
Mourning in Contrasting Milieus Diane Stubbings , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 21-22 May 2016; (p. 20)

— Review of Our Magic Hour Jennifer Down , 2016 single work novel ; Sing Fox to Me Sarah Kanake , 2016 single work novel
Review : Sing Fox to Me Alex Cothren , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 380 2016; (p. 52)

— Review of Sing Fox to Me Sarah Kanake , 2016 single work novel
Well Read : Evil That Lurks Beneath Everyday Life Katharine England , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 16 April 2016; (p. 36)

— Review of An Isolated Incident Emily Maguire , 2016 single work novel ; Sing Fox to Me Sarah Kanake , 2016 single work novel
Emotional Transportation for Families and Their Pain Peter Pierce , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 9-10 April 2016; (p. 29) The Saturday Age , 9-10 April 2016; (p. 29)

— Review of Wildlight Robyn Mundy , 2016 single work novel ; Sing Fox to Me Sarah Kanake , 2016 single work novel
Well Read : Evil That Lurks Beneath Everyday Life Katharine England , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 16 April 2016; (p. 36)

— Review of An Isolated Incident Emily Maguire , 2016 single work novel ; Sing Fox to Me Sarah Kanake , 2016 single work novel
Review : Sing Fox to Me Alex Cothren , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 380 2016; (p. 52)

— Review of Sing Fox to Me Sarah Kanake , 2016 single work novel
Mourning in Contrasting Milieus Diane Stubbings , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 21-22 May 2016; (p. 20)

— Review of Our Magic Hour Jennifer Down , 2016 single work novel ; Sing Fox to Me Sarah Kanake , 2016 single work novel
Friday Essay : On Telling the Stories of Characters with Down Syndrome Sarah Kanake , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: The Conversation , 22 April 2016;

Examines the representation of Down Syndrome in fiction, through the American novels The Memory Keeper's Daughter and Jewel, and through reflection on the author's own novel, Sing Fox to Me.

y separately published work icon Sing Fox to Me by Sarah Kanake : Notes Fay Helfenbaum , Melbourne : CAE Book Group , 2018 13925807 2018 single work criticism
Disability in Three Australian Gothic Novels : The Well, Sing Fox to Me and Lilian’s Story Liz Shek-Noble , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 37 no. 1 2022;

'The Gothic lends itself to critical examinations of disabled embodiment, yet this genre has ‘hitherto been largely ignored’ by disability studies scholars (Gregory 291). This essay redresses this omission by exploring disability in three Australian Gothic novels: Elizabeth Jolley's The Well (1986), Sarah Kanake's Sing Fox to Me (2016), and Kate Grenville's Lilian’s Story (1985). On initial glance, The Well and Lilian’s Story conform to the use of disability in the Gothic as a metaphor for social and psychological deviance. However, closer inspection of these novels and Sing Fox to Me demonstrates their resistance to the Gothic’s typical use of disability in phobic ways. Hester’s disability in The Well enables her to transcend the gender prescriptions of her patriarchal Australian community, even if it is initially constructed as a physiological sign of her disturbing possessiveness over Katherine. Against the ‘dramatic and unforgiving natural settings’ of the Tasmanian Gothic (Bullock 72), Sing Fox to Me interweaves Samson’s experience of Down syndrome with perennial themes of the genre including familial haunting and the intersection of past and present. Similar to The WellLilian’s Story shows the politically transformative nature of disabled embodiment, wherein the titular character’s fatness and ‘madness’ allow her to achieve self-realisation while defying the gender norms of her time. Ultimately, the three novels suggest that the use of disabled characters in some contemporary Australian Gothic narratives is clearing space for less-stereotypical portrayals of corporeal and psychological variation in this genre.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 29 Aug 2022 15:22:13
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  • Sunshine Coast Hinterland, South East Queensland, Queensland,
  • Western Tasmania (including the West Coast), Tasmania,
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