Chloe Hooper

The Arsonist (not surprisingly) is about an arsonist, in the terrible Black Sunday fires in Victoria. It is not fiction.

One of the most moving radio casts I have ever heard was when, working in my backyard weeding, I listened to a memorial on (what I think was) the first anniversary of that fateful day. It was very moving, even though I stood in Queensland a good 3 hour flight away.

So I approached this book cautiously. I had heard the author speak as to some of her more recent works, but had not read any of her works.

I am very glad that the book club prompted me to read this piece.

It focuses on this particular arsonist, who is 'different' and not well understood in (his?) society, but also on the Latrobe Valley, for so long a bastion for workers toiling at brown coal mines and coal fired electricity generators, only realising that following privatisation, and even more relevantly, with climate change views, their lives would change, with(apparently) little to fill in the gap.

Towns built on coal and power generation from coal would not survive, and yet what is the response to that?

I am not suggesting that this drove the arsonist's motives (if indeed given his mental capacity if I understood correctly, he had motives) but it tells of a community that lacks the resources that might have provided a different outcome.

It takes us through the police investigation, the initial work of the public defender, and the subsequent trial. I found the compassion on all side compelling. It was a tragedy all around.

The last pages of the book went on a bit of a ramble as to climate change, First Nations' relationship with fire and others related topics. These seemed to be add ons. Did Hooper think she needed to add something more? In my view it stood on its own merits before then. They were all valid comments/ observations, but were best kept for a different place me thinks.

The exception to that is Shirley: someone who suffered loss immensely through those fires but who in the following years, as depicted in those last pages, provided so much comfort to that community notwithstanding. A true inspiration.

Big Ship
7 June 2023… (mais)