Philip McLaren, a Kamilaroi man from the Warrumbungle Mountain region in northwestern New South Wales, is a most extraordinarily versatile author: Wikipedia tells me that he’s an academic with a Doctor of Creative Arts degree at Southern Cross university, lecturing in Canada, England, France, Spain, Germany, New Zealand and of course Australia. He writes literary fiction, detective stories and thrillers, and also non-fiction, social commentary, screenplays and academic essays. Of his seven novels, I’ve read Sweet Water, Stolen Land (see my review). Alas WP doesn’t tell me which four have been translated and distributed internationally. He’s won the David Unaipon award (in 1992) and the 2010 Prix Litteraire des Recits de l’ailleurs (a French prize for foreign literature).

But, says Wikipedia, McLaren has also worked as a professional musician and exhibited paintings and sculpture in London, Toronto, Vancouver, Nassau and Sydney. He’s also

a writer, producer, director and editor in film and television; and previously as a set designer, animator, illustrator, graphic designer and scenic artist for networks NBC, CBS and ABC in the USA; CBC and CTV in Canada and the Seven, Nine and Ten Networks in Australia as well the NZBC in New Zealand. He has amassed well over 100 on-screen credits.

It’s these experiences which enliven the provocatively titled There’ll Be New Dreams. The books I’ve read about Aboriginal culture have been enlightening about the ways in which the Dreaming lives on in the present, but in McLaren’s novel new dreams and a contemporary sophisticated and sometimes international lifestyle are superimposed on an ancient land and a people keen to be successful survivors of a catastrophic invasion by European settlers. It’s written in the form of linked short stories about an array of people from different eras and living in different places, but the one constant is their Aboriginal identity.

The Table of Contents brings together what seems at first to be a bewildering confusion: there are eleven dreams, starting with Ralph in Coonabarrabran in 1950 and then in Dream Two his relationship with Lottie in 1952, in 1961, then moving to Redfern in 1961 and 1966, then Parramatta in 1967 and 1969, then back to Redfern in 1973, this period coinciding with the historic referendum in 1967 and the emergence of land rights and other human rights for indigenous people from 1972 onwards. Dream Three brings us Emma in New York in 1952 and 1953, followed by Dream Four, which starts in La Perouse in 1905, and then back to 32,000 BC in Yabbra, on to Matlong in 1770, back to La Perouse in 1905 and concluding in Woolloomooloo in 1929. Except that ‘concluding’ is the wrong word to use because as the Dreams progress the reader sees that nothing concludes, everything is connected through time and place and family.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/07/07/therell-be-new-dreams-by-philip-mclaren/ ( )