The Burnished Sun
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley June 30, 2022
Author Mirandi Riwoe
Distributor: UQP
ISBN: 9780702265679
Publisher: University of Queensland Press (UQP)
Release Date: April 2022
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Mirandi Riwoe has captured the essence of humanity in her series of short stories all based on the fragility of humanity in The Burnished Sun.
Beautifully worded each vignette is a powerful look at people. From the artist’s muse in Annah, long removed from her beautiful Island of Java, she is pining for a life that is no longer hers. Held in captivation by poverty, language and the colour of her skin she is at the whim of French artist Gauguin at a time when the dusky south sea beauty was the artistic rage. She leaves, eventually gathering her courage and the poor little’ monyet’, like her held captive by bars in a cruel and careless society, a woman adrift, held ransom to the fates that will dictate.
Through the eye of a child racism is seen as divisive where there need not be, when a child is deliberately left out of the invitation lists of class parties, time and time again. His mother grieves for a different life; a life where she and her family can be considered as a whole component of the society in which they find themselves.
Reflective and immensely emotional, Hazel is forced, due to Covid, to share her family through a glass window, a captive of her surroundings in a care facility. How she longs for the human touch, the warmth of a hand, her son Chris sitting in the chair next to her. Through the glass she feels their love, the coldness of the day and slowly grieves for what once was.
The casual carelessness a mother has to face when a foetus is recovered from a small child’s abdomen. The child finds it amazing and wants to take the foetus to school for show and tell, his mother is grief stricken at the life that never was.
Two award winning novella’s grace this collection Annah the Javanese and The Fish Girl, both stepping back in time, both portraying life as it was and as it is now; nothing changes and yet everything does.
Poignant and delicate many of the stories in The Burnished Sun capture an aspect of racism, or of trying to fit in, to find a place of acceptance, that is lived and experienced daily by many and y those who choose, for one reason or another, to live in a country and culture far from their birth country.
The Burnished Sun is a masterclass in the construction of simple and yet powerful prose which tells a story, paints a picture and leaves behind images that will not be forgotten any time soon.