Hunting for a Tasmanian tiger

Great concept, disappointing execution.

‘The Hunter’ had a lot of things going for it.

A beautiful, moody setting in the wilderness of Tasmania. An enigmatic main character, the hunter ‘M’. And the search for the rumoured last Tasmanian tiger.

Unfortunately, I felt that the book fell flat due to the writing style and lack of energy in the plot.

The words were as plain as dry Weet-bix.

He opens the box. He picks up a Weet-bix. He eats it. He repeats.

It may be to some people’s taste. But it left me starving for descriptions of the misty, rugged forests.

This simple style may be more appropriate for a younger audience. The book’s concept would be excellent for children, delivering a message of environmentalism. Except that there are adult themes of sex, misogyny, and swearing throughout. M frequently fantasizes about ‘****ing’ women’s ‘****s’.

Rather than following a traditional hero, we follow the story of a villain. M is deeply unlikeable. He seeks to kill the tiger to sell it to a pharmaceutical company, who will weaponise the animal’s DNA.

In this type of story, the reader expects the character to have a change of heart. Will M decide not to kill the animal, and therefore achieve redemption?

SPOILER AHEAD:

M does not have any hesitation about killing the tiger.

This ending made an excellent point about our preference to profit from, rather than protect, the natural environment. It was refreshing to read a book that does not use a hopeful ending to convey its message.

But overall ‘The Hunter’ missed the opportunity to deliver a poignant, tragic emotional experience to the reader. I am sorry to say that this book could not keep my attention, and once I realised the plot was going nowhere I sped through so I could be done with it.

I rate it 1 out of 5 Tassie tiger stripes.

BONUS RANT:

I appreciate that there is room for artistic license, but it seems like the author was unfamiliar with hiking, as well as Tasmanian tigers.

The author writes M as being an expert hunter and well researched. He often refers to plants by species name and shows off his knowledge of the tiger. So I couldn’t look past these details.

• M lathers himself in faeces every time he enters the forest, and boils the meat intended for a lure. Surely no professional hunter would do this.

• M wears a kind of hula hoop around his waist filled with rice and water, with the idea that body warmth and movement will agitate the rice into an edible pulp. I don’t see how this makes any sense. The more I think about it the more ridiculous it gets.

• The plan is to fertilise a tiger egg with ‘a semi-compatible organism like a lynx or a wolf’. Tasmanian tigers are marsupials, not placental mammals. The closest living relative is the Tassie devil.

• M removes ‘the uterus’ from the tiger. But like other marsupials, the tiger would have two uteri.

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