Lothian, 2007

Requiem for a Beast, Matt Ottley’s latest offering for adults and young adults, is more than a book; it’s a feast for the mind, eyes and ears. This stunning ‘multi-modal work’ is a fusion of four creative formats: picture book, graphic novel, novella, and CD. Ottley uses all four modes to tell the story of a white boy on a journey of self-discovery in the harsh Australian outback, and to give voice to the secret history of Aboriginal Australians. What’s more, it’s laced with fantasy creatures and dreamscapes!

I fell in love with this book the second I opened it. Ottley-the-artist gifts us with sublime outback landscapes, stormy cloudscapes, Minotaurs and Centaurs that leave you wanting for more. His character’s faces huddle in your memories long after you close the book. Ottley-the-musician blends classical western music and traditional Bundjalung-Aboriginal songs for a moving, yet often disconcerting, accompaniment to the book. The music contributes both mood and theme to the story. Finally, Ottley-the-writer calls the reader upon a story pilgrimage that promises to be both entertaining and confronting.

When the boy becomes a jackaroo in outback Queensland, he embarks on a quest for personal healing and self-identity. He pursues a wild bull and faces the dark, familial secrets that he’s inherited from his father. Secrets that have become fantasy beasts—Minotaur, Centaurs and Ned Kellyish riders—that inhabit his dreamscapes and torment him. They press in on his daily living, just as they did his father’s. Can the boy cleanse himself of the beastliness within him, or will his father’s memories consume him?

Interwoven with the boy’s story is the tale of an Aboriginal Elder, a member of the Stolen Generation. Throughout the book, she appears as an old woman and a blurry-faced girl, symbolising that her identity has been stolen and her race memories removed through forced assimilation. Terrible secrets and beasts plague her dreamscapes too. Can she find her identity and remember what has been lost, before her life is over? Will the beasts of the boy’s and the Elder’s dreamscapes overpower them or will the find a way to break free?

The title Requiem for a Beast tells us a lot about the themes of the book. Requiems, burial masses for the dead that are carried out by the Roman Catholic Church, are structured around acts of remembrance, reconciliation and laying to rest. Requiems are also musical pieces that accompany such masses with sections focusing on the themes of judgement, forgiveness, reconciliation and resolution. Not surprisingly, these are the four central themes recurring on the CD and in Requiem for a Beast. This begs the question, who or what does the beast represent? Is the beast the wild bull the boy tracks? Is it the Australian Aborigines, or past Australian governments with their forced assimilation policies? Is it the fantasy creatures that demonise the dreamscapes of our protagonists? The book’s themes also encompass identity and memory, fear and bravery, loss and grief, isolation, rites of passage, and racism.

While Requiem for a Beast is a dark book, it also has snatches of pervasive light. It is utterly beautiful for its illustrations alone. Its threatening storm clouds and scenes of allegorical torment are balanced with sun-dappled landscapes that shift moods of despair to determined hope. The oil paint and coloured-pencil illustrations capture the dryness of the outback and the fresh eucalypt hues of the Australian bush perfectly. The characters are vibrant and colourful, each face being a crucible of emotion. The allegorical fantasy illustrations cleverly encourage the reader to look at psychological and social issues through new eyes. For example, in the boy’s dreamscape on pages 52-53, we see a terrified Aboriginal, Rudy, being violently bucked by a horse. The horse bucks him until man and animal morphs into a Minotaur-Centaur-beast that lets off a hideous scream. This illustration encourages the viewer to look through the eyes of a white-assimilationist government. It casts Aborigines as half-beasts to be conquered and tamed, subtly drew me to re-evaluate my own tacit cultural beliefs and moved me to tears of sudden empathy.

Besides the fact that the CD insert inside the back cover has left indent marks on some of the rear pages of the book, I have no complaints about the book.

With Australia’s National Sorry Day finally becoming a reality on February 13, 2008, empathy for members of the Stolen Generation is a thing many people are hoping for more of. If you want to know what feeling sorry is like, then reading this book might be a good place to start. While it may be a little dark for some, many Australian adults and young adults would benefit from reading it. Readers with a penchant for outback landscapes, mythical beasts, spiritual metaphors, rites of passage and Aboriginal songs will no doubt also enjoy this book. Whether you’re after a quick visual and musical feast, or would prefer a deliberate pondering of Australia’s secret history, you will get as much out of Requiem for a Beast as you are willing to put into it.

Matt Ottley is currently Artist in Residence at The Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre, Fremantle, Western Australia, where the original artwork for Requiem for a Beast is currently on display.

For more information on Matt Ottley’s work go to: www.mattottley.com