But words are not only a means of conveying obvious truths, basic facts. Words change the way we think about the world, they change the way we see things. We can use words to fool the world — and sometimes ourselves — into believing things are different to what they actually are. Sometimes this is done intentionally, and sometimes these inaccuracies are genuine mistakes. Words give us a sense of control over our own narrative. In difficult situations, we use words to make things easier to deal with — we tell stories that excuse our behaviour, we label things differently so that they feel more acceptable. Sometimes this is just something we need to do in order to cope with the hand life has dealt us. We might derive immediate comfort from these inauthentic narratives, but can this comfort last? What are the repercussions of living an inauthentic life?

“Even the air seemed on fire, subtly aflame with energy as it does when you are young, when the synapses are firing wildly and death is far away.”

Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex explores these themes in a compassionate and surprising family saga, spanning three generations of the Stephanides family. Our narrator, Cal, falls victim to an ill-fitting label early on in life. Born with ambiguous genitalia in a world that demands we place a binary label on every human born, Cal is christened Calliope. Even as Calliope reaches puberty, this label of “girl” has everyone, including herself, blinded to the truth. The blinkers created by a label, an expectation, make Cal’s journey to adulthood and beyond, much more painful that it needed to be.

“Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.”

Step back a generation, and Cal’s mother tries to craft herself a virtuous identity as the fiancee of a Greek Orthodox seminarian, in an attempt to deny the lustful attraction she feels towards her unattractive second cousin.

Stepping back yet one more generation, we have Cal’s grandparents fatefully boarding a ship to America together, agreeing that if they simply stop referring to each other as brother and sister, that they can start their new life together as husband and wife.

“Tessie allowed Milton to press his clarinet to her skin and fill her body with music. At first it only tickled her. But after a while the notes spread deeper into her body. She felt the vibrations penetrate her muscles, pulsing in waves, until they rattled her bones and made her inner organs hum.”

In each of these instances, these inauthentic narratives shape the reality of these characters. They force their true selves into these ill-fitting moulds. For a time, these inauthentic narratives hold. However, whether the lie is self-imposed or created by others, it cannot last. There are always consequences for living an inauthentic life and the people to suffer them aren’t always the ones who chose to live the lie.

“He heard a human voice singing, and moved toward it. Yes, a song in language. Then a crack of thunder, and his whole body seemed a chamber for that great voice, and he was shaping his renewed breath, had become an instrument for this old sound.”

Taboo opens with a scene worthy of a cinematic blockbuster: an out-of-control truck careening down a dusty rural highway, narrowly avoiding pedestrians and buildings, spectators spilling from the local pub to look on in horror and awe. Before we even know what we are looking at, we’re presented with a striking image: a figure emerging from the chaos… glowing, iconic, like a deity, like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

The rest of the book is essentially a flashback, taking us back through the preceding weeks and months and years so we can understand what events have led to this opening scene. It’s not a simple thing to unravel, because when it comes to the invasion of a country, the dispossession of a people, and the conflicts that arise for all the years thereafter, these are long chains of causality.

Thin stem of smoke, rising. The fire hissed, cracked, its many small tongues licking the wood; hummed like some animal relaxed and breathing in the throat.

In Taboo, Kim Scott explores the impact of loss of country and culture on an indigenous community in south-west Western Australia. They are the Noongar of Kokanarup — a part of the country where a massacre occurred over a hundred years ago, scattering the indigenous owners of the land. The descendants of those who survived live a broken life, circling around their ancestral home, but never quite returning to the place that is now considered cursed: taboo. The current-day Noongar want to dispel the taboo and reconnect with their roots: the local council is unveiling a “Peace Park”, a symbol of local reconciliation and they’ve been invited to make a cultural contribution to the opening ceremony. Which is ironic, because for the Noongar, their loss of land has also been their loss of culture — these scattered people have lost their language, are re-learning it from the few elders who still have some words, they are re-learning the stories of their land, re-learning what art tells these stories, they’re trying to fit in, to find and gather the lost pieces of themselves.

Outside, the mallee bristled at the bus’s approach, then writhed and thrashed and shivering leaves applauded the blustering vehicle’s departure. Despite the fine soil lifting in the wind, shadows remained etched in earth: trees and fence posts, clods of ploughed soil, even a bull ant defiantly gripping the road’s bitumen edge.

None of the family is unscathed by the historic massacre. It has left a hole in the community and in each of its people. Many of the family have tried to fill this void with drugs, which has led to violence, degeneration, and prison. The novel centres around the character of Tilly, a young woman raised by a white mother. She has only recently learned of her Noongar father and then, in quick succession, met him in the prison where he was incarcerated, witnessed his battle with cancer and then mourned his death. Tilly’s lost heritage leaves a hole in her too, a lack of self-belief that leaves her vulnerable to those who would flatter and seduce her with a life of drugs and dependence.

Sand gleamed silver. The sea’s ruffled presence, whispering and sighing; was trying to tell him something. Did God speak to us this way? The sky above. A shooting star. It was surely vanity to feel so special.

Throughout, Scott tells his story with the most beautiful descriptive language, descriptions that could only come from someone who themselves comes from the land. As brutal and dark as this book is in some parts, the poetry of its prose kept me reading on. This might be a story about loss and being lost, but it’s also a story about discovery and rebirth. Amidst the despair, there is hope for the future.