The Review of Contemporary Fiction
The Hunter by Julia LeighAllen Hibbard
Julia Leigh. The Hunter. Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000. 176 pp. $20.00.
The Hunter, published in Australia in 1999, has received much critical acclaim and has already been translated into French, German, and Italian. While the story is not without a few missteps, The Hunter is a wonderful first novel. A man, ostensibly a naturalist operating under the pseudonym Martin David, seeks the last Tasmanian tiger, reportedly sighted by Jarrah Armstrong, a bioethics expert who has disappeared on the same plateau where Martin, or M, commences his hunt. M, who works for a biotechnology company that covets the tiger’s genetic material, uses the Armstrong house as a base camp between forays onto the plateau. The elusive tiger maintains a certain mythical significance while the story focuses its attention on the hunter and his relationships within the cultural milieu of Tiger Town, a fictitious town in Tasmania, as well as the Armstrong household. The mythical hunt, with all the physical equipage of an actual hunt, is juxtaposed with the decaying farmhouse where Lucy Armstrong lives with her two children—Sass and Bike. The children have selected new names in an effort to distance themselves from the emotional turmoil of losing their father, while their mother has chosen a regimen of drugs, forcing Sass to manage the household. M, as a result, must rely on Sass; in the event that he doesn’t reappear as scheduled, Sass will have to notify the company. The success of the novel stems from Leigh’s ability to realize M’s character. At the same moment M hunts the tiger, he also, not surprisingly, hunts himself, and it is this internal hunt that drives the narration. The Hunter has been well received for good reason; the story resonates in the mind of readers. [Allen Hibbard]