1.Which McBride sibling do you find most relatable?
2.JJ is accused by those around her as being a troublemaker, both when she’s a child and as an adult. Do you think this is fair? How do you think this has affected her?
3.There is a strong presence of animals in this story – as well as the titular snakes, there’s also the piglets, the joey, the ferrets, crows, the grey brumby, Doll the dog and Max the bull. Choose an animal and explain what it contributes to the story.
4.How do gender roles affect the members of the McBride family? The women in this novel all display different kinds of strength. What do you think the book has to say about womanhood and girlhood. How is masculinity depicted?
5.How do Jack’s values inform his actions? Can they be seen as a justification?
6.Why do you think JJ was more driven to uncover the truth than the rest of her family?
7.JJ is reading Alice in Wonderland when her mother disappears. Fourteen years later, her sister is reading the same book. What significance does this have?
8.Why do you think the community labelled Peg as a mad woman? Do you think she was?
9.What does JJ have in common with the people in her boarding house (Marge, Rocco, Rat-Tail)?
10.Do you think Jack is genuinely remorseful over losing Sarah? Do you think he would do anything differently if he could? Explain why or why not.
11.JJ’s mother taught her about flowers and their meanings. How does this play into the story?
12.Why do you think Sarah decided to leave Jack? Do you believe it was for good?
About the author
Erina has worked with words, ideas and stories all her life. She started out as a journalist, working in radio and television and was awarded the prestigious Walkley Award for her work as an ABC foreign correspondent. She has a Master’s Degree in Professional Writing (University of Technology Sydney) and a PhD in Creative Writing (La Trobe University) on girl warriors and ball gowns. She’s taught politics at the University of Melbourne and creative writing at LaTrobe University and Writers Victoria. Her family claims she can glamorise a handful of facts beyond recognition in the service of an entertaining story, sometimes at the expense of truth but always in favour of wonder.
You can talk with Erina via @erinareddan or catch up with her via her website.
Sons are the anchors of a mother’s life.
Sophocles
Who lies for you will lie against you.
John Locke
RED BELLY BLACK SNAKE
I remember running through
fire blanket air, humid, heavy. Rotting sweet
sick mangoes. Fruit bat wings
rattling open, heavy curtains on
frail white rods. Running, like a
river slithers through cane fields, a
black snake
in flames. A hissing
match struck, and running.
Shirley Blakely, from Sugarcane Poems, 1958
PROLOGUE
AURORA | Goddess of Morning
Protector of childbirth. Often portrayed in Roman art as a young woman with wings like the dawn sky. She killed her own son in a jealous rage.
from Images of Women in Roman Art, by Phoebe Wharton
PHOEBE
You are not a firebug. If you killed anyone, I’d know. I know you. All those hours with your warm infant self damp against my shoulder, all that time cooking vegetables in ways you ate only once, all those afternoons cheering your team to football losses, frustrated over incomplete homework, holding you while you cried over grazed knees or the unkindness of schoolgirls – our shared umbilical cord must have left a residual connection, a spiritual navel. No one could be more sure of anything than me, of this. You are not a firebug.
Your committal hearing starts tomorrow. Of course I can’t sleep. I lie here, now and then reaching for my notebook or getting up to pace through the house. Like a trial, every bushfire tells a story. Every bushfire has a beginning, a middle, an end. A year ago, smoke from the Brunton fire twisted around our window frames, slid under the door, forced its fingers through keyholes. I’ve been unable to keep the outside world out since then. Fire didn’t destroy our home, but the rumours that came afterwards did. Attacks continue whenever I check my email or the news. Your lawyer says it isn’t wise for us to begin your defence yet. But I must defend you, get my thoughts in order. Every fire has a beginning, but not every fire is begun by an arsonist. Every trial has an ending, not every ending is just.
Before teaching, I studied art history. Now, in my notebook, information about ancient Roman mosaics has been supplanted by research about accelerants, motives for arson, rising global temperatures, wind patterns, the forensic distribution of burned eucalyptus leaves. Now, instead of wondering what excavated art reveals about Roman life, I wonder how anything withstands time or fire. I once studied a mosaic showing the goddess Demeter abandoning the Earth to drought while she rescued her child from the kidnapper Hades. It’s the judicial system that has kidnapped you, but I am just as maddened by the need to rescue you. You’ve been in custody. Even on bail, darkness has imprisoned you. You might be returned to jail, this time for years. I need strength to keep you home.
It’s months since the first kookaburra returned to our yard, perched on a ruined manna gum branch. Other animals have returned to the Yarra Valley – cattle, sheep, kangaroos. I see them when I’m out running. Again in the mornings, I hear the warbling of magpie song through air unstained by smoke. Later in the day, once again currawongs squawk. New leaves grow on surviving trees. Along the dark ground and up the towering ghosts of eucalypts, new leaves grow, a bright surprising green. Though our neighbours and the council have fought them, imported weeds have also sprung to life: thistles, asphodel, turnip weed,
