Pandanus Books, operating under the aegis of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, has a new imprint—Sullivan’s Creek. The man behind this is Ian Templeman, one of the real movers and shakers in this country’s publishing. As founding director of the Fremantle Arts Centre in 1972, Templeman established a press that brought to the fore some of Australia’s most interesting writers, including Elizabeth Jolley, Nicholas Hasluck, A.B. Facey and Sally Morgan.
Then, in 1990, Templeman took up a key position at the National Library of Australia. His brief was to develop its publishing capacity, which he did with aplomb for seven years. Soon after that came Molonglo Press, concentrating on poetry and fine art publication, and, in 1999, Pandanus. Since then Pandanus has produced material ranging over a multitude of cultures and academic disciplines, embracing biography, memoirs and fiction. Now, with the Sullivan’s Creek imprint, it’s pushing further in that direction, spotlighting new writers mainly from the Canberra region.
Of the two whose work is reviewed here, Jan Borrie has published with Templeman before. Her first novel, Verge, appeared in 1998 as one of Molonglo Press’s exquisite pocket editions. Unbroken Blue, a more ambitious undertaking, gives greater scope for her talents. The narrative, held within a string of brief, tantalising, yet lyrical chapters encompassing multiple perspectives, is essentially her version of the Pleiades myth, brushed off, polished up and shaped with her poet’s touch anew.
In Borrie’s retelling, the focus is less on the lost seventh sister, and more on her daughter, who is abandoned when her mother disappears. Annabella’s plight is to be bounced from one aunt to another, and in each of their homes she’s subjected to a form of neglect or abuse. Still, at the core of Annabella’s misery is the initial desertion. She cannot, will not, accept that the mother who loved her would simply walk away and leave her to her fate.
Borrie is an intriguing writer, with an almost instinctual feel for the harmonious disposition of the elements comprising her art. All the pieces fit. And though abandonment is often held to be the childhood experience with the greatest potential for damage, and there are some hideously raw moments for Annabella, Unbroken Blue is not a sob story—Borrie is too clear-eyed for that. That said, and despite the sharp concision of her language, the novel has a lovely, dreamlike