Marketing the boundaries: The fiction of Margo Lanagan

Lanagan’s young protagonists are often embedded in loving if imperfect families. The young girl in Ferryman adores her father, who ferries the dead across the river Acheron. The boy in Into the Clouds on High loves his mother enough to forgive her her unusual destiny that robs him of her presence.

The terrifying quality of Lanagan’s work lies in its clear-eyed portrayal of how powerless most of us are against the indifferent forces crushing us. She refuses the temptation of writing ‘empowered’ or ‘active’ characters whose empowerment depends on adults being absent. When they are absent, as in the war-torn environment of Heads, we see the cost. As Lanagan tweeted recently, and I presume half-seriously, her female characters are ‘pathologically passive’. Good on her for that.

We know Lanagan is a serious writer, with serious concerns and beautiful prose but I wonder how many adult readers miss out on her work because her books are in the YA section of the bookstore and the library?

Keep them there by all means but start putting them in the adult sections too.