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The Undiscovered CountryA Novel
Then, without any warning, Taylor could speak Abini. June and Peter could not recall a learning period, a month when the girl communicated awkwardly with the villagers. By the time June noticed her daughter speaking the native language, the girl was spitting out long sentences at her friends, laughing with them, and joining in songs and chants, and when June’s back was turned to Taylor and her friends, she could barely distinguish her daughter’s voice from those of the other children.
The Undiscovered Country:A Novel -
The Undiscovered CountryA Novel
When he woke up, he did not know where he was, and the red, grease-covered boys and the men chanting in Abini began to blend into a dark pattern where he could no longer make out individuals. The men started to play bamboo flutes, and the sound disappointed Peter. The flutes sounded distant and reedy, and the music had no melody, only an insistent percussive drive. He looked around the room and tried to find Makino or any of the other men he had come from Abini with, but he could not distinguish any of the people around him.
It was only when he saw [his daughter] Taylor, sitting near the door with poinsettia leaves crowning her head, that he realized he was hallucinating. Ah, he thought, I am really very sick now. And then he was aware of fainting into Makino’s arms.
The Undiscovered Country:A Novel -
The Undiscovered CountryA Novel
She called Taylor inside and asked her to pronounce the words. Taylor stared at her mother, silent, with large eyes that seemed full of fear. For a moment June thought that she would say something, or refuse to be with her, but she stayed there, quiet, unhappy, and finally began to speak Abini so quickly the words sounded like hiccups in her mouth. June mimicked her daughter and heard how awkwardly her own voice wrapped around the language—she knew she sounded wrong and comical.
“I can’t get it right,” she said.
“Try, Mom. Try harder,” Taylor said.
The Undiscovered Country:A Novel
“ . . . chockablock with ideas: about the admiring but voyeuristic fascination that anthropologists and art collectors have toward primitive societies; about the class system and its fallout on friendships, marriages and professional associations; about the relationships between fathers and sons; about the dynamic between America and the undeveloped world.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times [on King of America]
“Powerful and prodigiously assured . . .The dreamlike, portentous atmosphere of Gillison's novel continues to haunt us long after we've finished the book.” —Francine Prose, Elle [on The Undiscovered Country]
“Samantha Gillison has written an intense and frightening first novel, a keenly observed domestic drama played out against a backdrop of exotic flora and fauna . . . the novel's real strength is its utterly persuasive conjuring of life in the New Guinea highlands. Gillison renders the grotesque, threatening beauty of the landscape—as well as the odd elusiveness of contacts between the Campbells and the local population—with an authority unusual in a first-time novelist . . . The Undiscovered Country is an exceptional feat of storytelling, as vivid and powerful as a malaria dream—and just as hard to shake from your system.” —Salon
