Craig Robertson (2)

Buckley's Hope is a fictional account of William Buckley, a convict transported to Australia who escaped and lived in the bush with a band of aborigines for more than thirty years, until white settlers colonised what is now Melbourne.
This is an amazing story and should have been an interesting read, but I found it sadly unengaging. There is of course the problem that Buckley could read, but not write, and therefore left only his memoirs as taken down by someone else when he was old and his memory faulty. Robertson had to rely on other sources, most of which reflect the racist attitudes of the times and vilify Buckley. Still: the prose is simplistic and full of aborigine words as if to reflect their plain and simple lives, yet he lets Buckley reflect on his situation with modern sensibilities. The chapters about the return to white society and the heady development of the settlement feel rushed.
But the most off-putting thing are the typos, if they took the trouble to re-publish the book they should have taken the time to proof-read it. I cannot count how often b and h were transposed, how often I stumbled because wrong words had slipped in or because words or entire lines were missing. Nice try, shame about the execution.… (mehr)