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  • Perfect. Punctuation
  • Matt Wharton
Paul Mitchell. We. Are. Family. Adelaide: Midnight Sun, 2016. 273 pp. A$24.99. ISBN 9781925227109

The scorpion needs to cross the river. He watches the boy's eyes as he scurries onto the quivering chest. I need to be brave enough not to sting. The water flows over the boy's chest and touches the scorpion's feet. The fear causes a reaction, and the tail pierces the chest. In this instant, he knows that he will drown, he knows the pain he is causing [End Page 326] the boy, but the reaction is familiar; the fear has made him feel there is no other way. In Paul Mitchell's debut novel, We. Are. Family., masculinity is laid bare. Three generations of the Stevenson family are crippled by the pretense of appearing strong. Familiar equilibrium is punctuated by trauma. We see the scorpion's tail pierce the boy's chest to deliver the poison; we feel the father's eyes want his sons to have fun fishing because as males, the challenge of knots and poles and the silence of water has to give us a chance to feel our souls. The bold title is absolutely perfect. In my California surfer dialect, this! Book! rocks!

On nearly every other page, there is writing of the highest order. When Ron Stevenson, the paterfamilias, is introduced, "Soon the sky turned rough charcoal like the barbecue when Ron forgot to clean it. Stars queued up quietly on the horizon and Ron saw his youngest two were asleep" (12). When light bounces back onto a surface it reflects, when light bends off at an angle like a stick that plunges into the river, it is a case of refraction. Listen to the rhythm of "quietly queued up on the horizon," and the sibilance of "saw his youngest sons were asleep." Paul Mitchell has successfully brought his skills as a poet into this novel. Ron's inability to communicate and his excuse that it is his wife's job to caress their children show a man who cannot escape from the familiar jail cell of his own false pride and pretense.

There is no simple culprit to blame in this novel. Each generation carries Thor's hammer above the glass of innocence. The line of the tightrope stretches between having to hurl the hammer at the world in rage or having to carry the hammer until the only one we can smash is ourselves. Everything else is too far away.

Peter is the young man whose eyes swallow the world with his innocence: "Rain splashed Peter's window and he looked at his reflection in the droplets" (16). Even when he is six years old, the mechanism of shame insinuates its way into his soul. He feels that his Aunty has been taken away because he "dobbed" (16) on her. The eyes in his reflection ask why she has to be removed to a sanatorium when she is full of light and color, when she does not approach the world with a sense of Australian restraint and decency. The narrator coerces us into Peter's rationalization as to why there is no peace in any of the Stevenson households. After the first fifty pages of the novel, I realized that the narrator was not holding back, that he is also constrained by a sense of toxic masculinity.

As males, we feel that it is our duty to carry the coals; we become addicted to the pain and the smell of burning flesh. The first outing with the boys, Ron "watched his floater. The sun had started for home and the water was sparkling orange. Don't drown the kids" (34). As the peace of the natural world begins to soak into Ron, his wife's voice intrudes violently. The mastery of art here is that Ron does not need to take his wife's words personally, but he needs to make himself feel that she is destroying the core of his being: "He studied the backs of his hands. They were muddy from digging in the worm container. Greasy from the reel...

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