Postcolonial Impressions in Jonathan Bennett's Verandah People

Abstract

Focusing on the short story collection Verandah People (2003) by Canadian-Australian author Jonathan Bennett, this paper examines the ways in which postcolonial issues permeate Bennett's writings about Australia and its landscape. The essay explores these impressions from the perspective of the verandah as a threshold (or hybrid) phenomenon, as a key moment or memory that reveals something about the inner emotional lives of Bennett's characters. Beyond that, however, it looks at how the impression is also an act of violence, something that has physical force, like Bennett's metaphor of the tree bleeding sap from a nail wound, or the beach pockmarked by hail stones at the end of the collection.