Mine by Adam Ouston review – novel told in a single sentence is a hallucinatory reading experience

Ouston’s second novel follows a poet who is trapped in an abandoned mine in Tasmania while searching for inspiration for his ‘last great work’

The ideal way to approach Mine, Adam Ouston’s second novel, might be to read it out loud in one exhausting sitting, to let its cadences roll and accumulate. This is a novel that consists of one long sentence, and thousands of clauses, digressions, conjunctions, modifications and clarifications. There is nowhere for the reader to rest.

To read Mine out loud would leave one short of breath, parched, uncomfortable, delirious – and thus in sync with its central character, a poet, activist and teacher who has tumbled to the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft in western Tasmania, and now lies in the dark.

Mine by Adam Ouston is out now (Transit Lounge, $34.99)