The Hunter (Paperback)

by Julia Leigh (Author) "Now the little plane drops and the fat woman sitting next to him yelps and spills her coffee; his tray of food goes flying..." (more)
Key Phrases: Martin David, National Parks, Jack Mindy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Already a hit in Australia, Leigh's flawed but exciting debut describes the deadly search for the fabled, and perhaps extinct, Tasmanian tiger, aka the thylacine. A mysterious man who is identified to the reader only as M assumes the identity of "Martin David, naturalist" and arrives at the filthy, disheveled house of depressed Lucy Armstrong, whose husband, Jarrah, a naturalist and bioethics expert, recently disappeared on the plateau. Lucy's home becomes the base for M's treks into the wilderness, ostensibly to study the habits of Tasmanian devils. In fact, and in secret, M works for a biotech company. His mission: to secure genetic material from what may be the world's last remaining thylacine, reportedly sighted on the plateau. M must hide his true occupation from Lucy and her lonely children, Sass and Bike, as well as from the National Parks researchers and the suspicious local townspeople. Sydney-based Leigh shifts ably between M's laconic narration and third-person storytelling. With the exception of a superfluous (and clumsily handled) romantic subplot, the novel's events are compelling, drawing the reader deep into M's inner jungle. Leigh is most effective when writing in M's voice, exploring his relationship to the wilderness, his tracking expertise and his ability "to think like a true and worthy predator." Fans of Peter Matthiessen will find Leigh darker and sometimes less ambitious, but effective in similar ways, as M's obsession with the hunt drives this moody work by a gifted new author to its chilling conclusion. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker
"The topography of this first novel is familiar...but the author makes no crude push for transcendence....As clear-eyed and cold-blooded as her hero." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (November 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142000027
• ISBN-13: 978-0142000021
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #924,106 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An absorbing search for the last 'tiger', September 20, 2000

By	Nicholas Birns (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Hunter (Hardcover)

I have read many contemporary Australian novels in the past few years, and this was one of the most interesting. Its immediate subject is the search for a living specimen of the apparently extinct thylacine or Tasmanian `tiger'. The main character, Martin David or M, has been hired by biotechnological interests to secure a living specimen of the thylacine which he can then kill and clone. As he searches for the animal, he is confronted with an unexpected obstacle: the domesticity represented by Lucy Armstrong, the woman with whom he is lodging, and her two odd children Bike and Sass. Jarrah Armstrong, the husband and father of the family, has vanished in the same mountains where M is pursuing his quarry; M feels a double identification with Jarrah as he faces the same risks in the wild as did his predecessor. In addition he feels the danger, or the promise, of being co-opted into Jarrah's domestic role. Though M is attracted to Lucy and has warm feelings for the children, he warily holds on to his own male solitude, an allegiance also figured in his response to the femininity of the last thylacine itself. This is a vivid, compelling narrative whose significance does not just reside in its own details. It clearly is an allegory of `globalization', where M is the metropolitan outsider seeking to exploit the environment, and the nature and people of Tasmania represent a local particularity in danger of being absorbed into the global. The paradox here is that the global cannot operate without the content, the materiality, provided by the local. So M and the global concerns he represent NEED Tasmania, and the thylacine, even as they try to exploit it for the purposes of the global machine. The writing here is so vividly pictorial that these intellectual issues never tower above the novel's exciting plot. They are there for those who are interested, but on its own strength Julia Leigh's novel is a gripping read full of both adventure and mystery.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Thylacine enthusiasts - stay away!, July 25, 2001

By	M. Souza (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Hunter (Hardcover)

I purchased this book for the thylacine angle - I've been fascinated with this possibly extinct creature with childhood and try to gobble up any and all information about it. From that perspective, reading this book is a disappointment. The thylacine isn't the subject of this book, but rather, as the title implies, it is about "The Hunter." The thylacine is just an excuse. As for the book, I felt that it was mediocre at best. The background reasoning for the story - a biotech company that wants the thylacine, or its parts, for some reason -is basically superfluous and remains unexplained. As an exploration of the hunter's psyche, the book is somewhat successful, and the author did a fair job of conveying the flora and fauna of the region. By far the biggest disappointment, though, was the ending. Not merely because I'm a thylacine enthusiast, but as a reader of fiction. If during reading the novel, one imagined the worst possible scenarios for how the book was to end, I doubt that you could come up with one so bleak, depressing, and mortifying.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Grim., February 6, 2001

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: The Hunter (Hardcover)

Those who say this book resonates long after they have finished it are correct, but it resonates because its message is so bleak, even hopeless. And one suspects that the author is intentionally playing with the reader here by turning "quest fiction" on its head to make a point about those who would not only despoil Nature for profit, but make a conscious decision to sacrifice compassion and the essence of humanity in the process.

Martin David, which may or may not be his real name, is in search of the thylacine, a Tasmanian tiger which may be extinct. In no sense of the word a "hero," Martin is being highly paid by a corporation to find the last tiger and to extract the DNA which can be used to clone it, and he is so obsessed with fulfilling his mission that he becomes virtually a hunting machine, being referred to not by his name, but simply as M. During days that he is not hunting, however, he stays with the Armstrong family, dysfunctional since the disappearance of the father, Jarrah Armstrong, and we see some niggling traces of humanity as M begins to respond to the two wonderful, resilient Armstrong children, desperately in need of his help.

In other "quest fiction," such as Faulkner's The Bear, we can distinguish between hunter and prey and gain some enlightenment about the role of man in the universe by observing the hunter's respect for his prey as it grows during the duration of the hunt. Here, however, the edges are blurred. Our view of whether M or the thylacine is really the hunter changes, as does our understanding of which is the more ruthless, and which, if either, triumphs during the hunt. Though the prose is brutally compelling and the sense of drama very high, the message here feels like a message, and it is very grim. This reader wished that it were the M's of this world who were extinct. Mary Whipple