Books
Stowing wild stoats
by Kevin Rabalais
Mr Allbones’ Ferrets, Fiona Farrell’s fifth novel, begins in big-budget cinema gloss. All the scents and colours of Victorian England, at least those from its dank back rooms, are here. There are dubious activities, pacts made behind closed doors, an identity switch, even an unwed pregnant damsel. Accents delivered in sharp-eared dialogue note social hierarchy among characters who could have stepped from Dickens’s pages. But the novel’s subtitle – “an historical pastoral satirical scientifical romance, with mustelids” – alerts us that we are far from the world of David Copperfield.
The subtitle’s final detail provides the novel with its drive and also contains its seed. In her introduction, Farrell notes that Walter Allbones and his colleague Fowler Metcalfe travelled from England to New Zealand in 1885. The only historical mention of their names, she writes, appears “with a kind of ironical aptness on a couple of receipts for a consignment of stoats”.
From this scant detail, Farrell weaves an ambitious novel that moves from pastoral England to a ship bound for New Zealand. Aboard the ship are strange occupants, namely Allbones’s ferrets, procured for their great destiny to “rescue the New Zealander from ruin!” The ferrets “are to supply the nucleus for a new colony. They are to be dispatched to the other side of the world, where they will be employed as they have been employed in [Great Britain] since the days of Caesar and his legions, in the control of rabbits.”
Meanwhile, in England, Allbones has achieved fame as a ferret breeder. When Eugenia approaches Allbones with a prospect, he soon comprehends the fortune that his ferrets can make on the other side of the world. At the very least, he recognises the beauty of this woman who will sail to New Zealand. The agreement is simple. While in New Zealand, Allbones will purchase native birds for Eugenia’s grandfather. “No one has yet managed to transport a living pair,” Eugenia tells Allbones, “but he plans to bring them here, to breed in our aviary.” The grandfather hopes to include drawings of the birds in a great book on extinction.
The novel is set primarily aboard the ship bound for New Zealand. Once there, however, the narrative endeavours to observe moments that often seem inconsequential to the story’s overall trajectory. Within 100 words, for instance, we read twice about the ship passengers’ propensity to vomit, with an accompanying “overpowering stench”. One mention allows the reader to embrace such an unpleasant olfactory detail, but eager repetition weakens its value.
Along with this, the novel sustains an overabundant prose style. Though an attempt to enhance the novel’s historical setting, the writing here often calls unwanted attention to itself. Farrell’s characters breathe luxuriously, watch narrowly, chat desultorily and smile dangerously. In childbirth, a baby slides alarmingly while, later, another character screws something in the same manner.
Instead of enhancing the story, the excessive and often baffling descriptive words create a slippery prose that leaves the reader with little to grasp. Though we may be able to deduce the writer’s intentions, most readers will have difficulties seeing the forest for the trees.
For her previous novels, which include The Hopeful Traveller, Book Book and The Skinny Louie Book, Farrell has been praised for the sensual energy she brings to her scenes and settings. In Mr Allbones’ Ferrets, we find bursts of that energy. For the most part, unfortunately, the reader never fully detects the story’s pulse.
MR ALLBONES’ FERRETS, by Fiona Farrell (Vintage, $27.99).
