Book Review: Nock Loose by Patrick Marlborough
If I were asked to describe the book Nock Loose by Patrick Marlborough, the description would go something like this:
Think, like, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but if they were all LARPing, and also, aggressively Australian.
Nock Loose is funny, absurd, and heart-wrenching. Every character is important, and so is every throwaway line. Its worldbuilding is insane, not just in its attention to detail, but also in the psychology of its founding characters. From the rousing screams of “PUCKER PUCK” every time the man is mentioned, to the full songs and Wikipedia articles, the book’s lore goes back so far it’s almost incomprehensible.
The novel is about Joy, a retired archer, who loses her granddaughter, Hannah, and embarks on a mission of revenge during Agincourt 2023. Agincourt is an annual week-long medieval-ish roleplay event taking place in Bodkin, a small rural Australian town, since the late 19th century. It features blood, guts, and grievous bodily harm. The Bodkinites handle it with equanimity.
The most important thing to know about Nock Loose is, in my opinion, what Marlborough themself has written in their author’s note.
“Nock Loose,” they write, “is in many ways the result of – and response to – the dire humorlessness of OzLit, and the ever-tedious yet ubiquitous ‘small town with a big secret’ / ‘person returns home to dig up trauma through metaphor’ (why is everyone always returning home!?!).”
In fact, Nock Loose has all these trappings. The small town of Bodkin does have a big secret. Joy did return home. And she does have to overcome the shadows of her past and current trauma.
So, in that way, Nock Loose possesses all the hallmarks of OzLit – the main difference being only the “humorlessness” department.
Nock Loose uses humour like a punch in the face. You turn around and, shit, there’s another fist in the face. It’s funny in its surprise factor and in its rapidity. There’s a new gag around every corner, and they’ll knock you out. Marlborough ascribes this quality in their writing to a terminal lack of self-seriousness. If OzLit is as serious as the grave, Nock Loose is the one with party poppers doing a merry jig.
Its innate absurdity is why I would relate it to Monty Python. It’s the fever-dream, whiplash-inducing quality it has – to bounce from grief and loss to increasingly ridiculous lore to tragedy to hilarious town meetings. It’s as good an invocation of “And now for something completely different” as any. Writing out of spite is something I understand, as I’m sure many authors do. But it’s not only OzLit that Marlborough is railing against; he’s also upset with the country that spawned it.
“Like anyone who describes themselves as ‘a laugh’,” Marlborough writes, “Australia is a deeply humourless country with incredibly thin skin. Dig into its history at all and you’ll see that that thin skin is stretched tight over an atavistic ever-thrumming nastiness, itself the inevitable curdling of our violent colonial origins, the barbarousness of which is ongoing.”
Nock Loose is angry. It’s murderous and unapologetic. At times, it feels too large, too complicated – its characters lost in the great swell of rage and trauma and violence that have always been Australia’s hallmarks. Sometimes, the commentary on Australia’s horrific past can get bogged down in the recounting of battles and exploits.
But maybe that’s the point. Australia is a country perpetually reliving its glory days. In the words of Captain King, the founder of Agincourt: “We will perfect history by reliving it.” And that’s what they do. Bodkin is a town with large, ritualistic battles every year that attempt to recreate the past. But even after the battle is done, Bodkin is still stuck in the past. Bodkin is defined by Agincourt. Everyone is touched by its violence and its tragedy and, setting aside the jokes and gags, as well as the glorification, it’s just sickening.
So, what would I say about Nock Loose? Come for the laughs, stay for the showcase of the violence inherent in the system.
You can buy the book here.
Danica Hehre
Acquisitions Director