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| The Natural Way of Things |
I don't usually include spoilers, but I think it's unavoidable with this book. The story is about ten 'celebrity sluts' (girls who have been involved in high profile sex scandals or rape cases) who are abducted and held together in an Australian outback sheep station surrounded by a high electric fence. Two men, Teddy and Boncer, have been paid to guard and feed the girls and put them to work. The girls have their heads shaved and are forced to wear dirty old fashioned clothes. As food runs out, and whoever hired Boncer and Teddy fails to show up, both the men and the girls realise they're all likely to die.
The book is reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, the girls coping with their captivity in different ways. One girl hunts and skins rabbits for the others to eat, one looks for mushrooms in the hope of poisoning the men, three girls take to grooming and depilating each other. What is striking about all the girls is the things they miss. Rather than talking about their families or loved ones, they obsess about their Chloe boots and their clothes.
The book is obviously allegorical and has a message (I resisted using Google to find out what that is). I suspect the book is a parody of a celebrity reality TV show that I haven't watched. Perhaps its purpose is to make the reader appreciate all they have. Alternatively, the purpose may be to remind the reader that not everyone has those things and that in some parts of the world women are treated like slaves. The hero of the story, if there is one, is the hunter. She finds her animal self and a level of happiness. She doesn't personify the qualities that are normally admired in women. She is not kind, or gentle or caring. She is strong, efficient and practical.
I enjoyed the story even if I couldn't relate to any of the characters. Mushroom picking Verla, was perhaps the one I could most sympathise with. I couldn't see why the girls didn't work together and overpower the men, but maybe that's the point of the story; how bizarre it is that women let men treat them the way they do and how much more we could achieve if we supported each other.
