Craig Sherborne / Text Publishing
A family of five itinerants, or “trants”, squats in an abandoned shack outside of Melbourne, in a small town called Barleyville. These “trants” know the rules: don’t get noticed, remain loyal at all costs, and keep moving. Yet there is something about this space – which the family eventually deems Tree Palace – that fosters a wish to settle, possibly permanently. In the opening scene, thirty-something grandmother Moira brings home baby Mathew, her 15-year-old daughter Zara’s baby. Zara rejects her child, revealing a damning secret to her mother, and Moira takes control of the child’s care. Moira’s son Rory, fourteen, wants to lead a life of pinching antique goods from abandoned properties like his stepfather-of-sorts, Shane, who acts as a father to the boy. Zara has a father figure in Midge, Shane’s brother, if only she will let him.
Throughout the book we see how perilous and unsettling the life of itinerants can be. In one scene, the family spends a few hours in a motel room, taking showers, using clean white towels, watching TV, and flushing the toilet. “This is the life,” Moira says. We see how fleeting even this level of comfort and security is for this makeshift family who all have different last names. But there is also much dignity in their trant lifestyle. They are proud of what they are able to achieve – small stolen goods, rigging up an improvised shower, attaining off-the-books employment – and small joys, like the twinkling of a glass chandelier hanging from a tree branch. Tree Palace conveys illuminating insight into “trant” culture grounded in perceptive detail.
Although the story at times settles into the points of view of all the main characters, it is Moira’s story. She reckons with her conflicting emotions toward her daughter, her own dependency and illiteracy, and becomes a quasi-mum to Mathew, with some extraordinary consequences. We also see in Moira the insistence that if observed would immediately reveal her as different and difficult. But as we read from Moira’s point of view, we want her to be pushy, even histrionic – to win her daughter a job, to visit a friend in jail, to coerce a lawyer. When Zara is called a “trant” – the word itself an insult – Moira gives her tools to bolster her self-worth, to see their future in a new and better way.
Reminiscent of Road Story by Julienne van Loon, Sherborne’s characters take us into a world unknown to most readers. They are the down-and-outs who have a right to feel hopeless, their destinies severely limited. And yet even though no one in this family will finish school, maintain legal employment or travel the world, Tree Palace provides some appreciation for their agency, independence and gratitude for the simple joys of being alive. Perhaps the author was too soft on the consequences of their misdeeds, but we root for them nonetheless, and at times the story makes us question what it means to live a satisfying life and be part of a family.
