Reviewed by Magdalena Ball
Rite of Spring
By Kris Kneen
Transit Lounge
ISBN: 9781923023581, July 2026, Paperback, 272pp, AUD$34.99, NZD$39.99
Kris Kneen new book, Rite of Spring, is delightful, strange and bizarrely sexy. The title hints at awakening and that is one of the key themes in this book, which teases and tricks the reader with its silky narration, fast plot, and the beautiful conjunction of suspense and rich inner dialogue. The story begins in a traditional way. Miranda and Richard arrive in a “wild beast of a tide”, their boat tossed in the choppy waters of a remote Tasmanian lighthouse where they have taken on the role of caretakers for six months. They are hoping that the job will give them a fresh start after Richard’s affair and a recent diving accident that nearly killed Miranda. The story primarily progresses from Miranda’s point of view as she gets stuck into the new job, taking weather measurements, removing mould from the windows, and maintaining the garden in what seems like constant squalls. Before the accident, Miranda was a Marine Biologist. Though always a little uncomfortable in her skin on land, in the water she was in her element, a “creature of the ocean”:
On one dive, she brought back a sponge to study in the lab. A fortress of skeletal platforms and lacework. Worlds within worlds. The closer she looked under the microscope, the more she could see. This was a citadel, and the life that made a home on the sponge’s back was strange and beautiful. Single-celled organisms and multicellular creatures, viruses, bacteria. Each part of the sponge was an army within an army. She thought of her own body, the plethora of bacteria and viruses and multicellular creatures seeking out an existence on her skin, in her mouth, in each fold of her gut. (30-31)
After the accident Miranda was told not to dive into deep water for a year or even two, and she is still struggling with this loss, combined with fluctuating menopause hormones and the lingering pain of Richard’s affair. Her insecurity makes Miranda an immediately engaging character—the reader can’t help but identify with her hunger for the sea, her desire to please, her bodily discomfort, and the the way she reaches for words to ground her: “Island, atoll, skerry, key archipelago, enclave, islet, peninsula, shelter, cay, isle, holm, reef, sanctuary”. Richard is sincere in his way, always trying to fix what is broken, including Miranda. The growing gap between the two is handled with delicacy and warmth, even as the story progresses from what feels like straightforward literary lighthouse fiction along the lines of The Lightkeepers Wife or The Light Between Oceans, to something surreal and distinctively beautiful. It all begins with the strange sound that Miranda hears:
At first it was that single pure note. She felt the hairs on her arms rise up, felt the desire begin again deep in the pit of her stomach. The note travelled through her body as it had only hours before, rattling her, vibrating through her pubis. Arousal grew restless inside her, a subtle uncoiling. (69)
There is an alternative narrator, Kris, whose voice opens the book. Kris is a sort of guide, breaking the fourth wall, and providing poetic interludes that feel both like a direct address to the reader and the song of the mysterious stranger:
You are not a lone note.
I am not a lone note.
We trigger vibrations in others if we sense a similarity of waveform.
See what can be triggered when my body sings. (159)
The voice of Kris Is not the only thing that is self-referential in this book. The story in Rite of Spring is engaging but Kris the narrator reminds us that we are in story mode, and that note everything is necessarily to be taken literally. The characters are well-drawn and their arc through the story is masterfully developed, but it is possible to see Miranda’s transformation, the endless wild weather (though on point for remote Tasmanian lighthouses like Maatsuyker or Tasman Island), and perhaps even the lighthouse itself as being something other than what they seem. At one point Miranda is reading the journals and thinks about the odd stranger she saw, wondering:
if anyone would believe it was fact and not just fiction. A metaphor, perhaps. Fiction was always a metaphor for something other. She knew this intimately. (145)
These three voices: Kris’ interludes, the main narrative and the journals that Miranda finds are combined perfectly to encompass Miranda’s story, the effigies she uncovers, the sound of the wind and water, and even the fish. Kneen may be of the few writers with the ability to make seaweed sexy, reminding us all that we are elemental, and perfect in any form:
Something touched her leg. Something curled up and around, and it was soft and sticky and felt like a cloud and a secret and a rope and a shiver all at the same time. She kicked out at it, sticky ropey tendrils. Kelp probably, hands of seaweed drifting around her leg with the shifting tide. A caress. (185)
There is so much in Rite of Spring that is tender and inclusive. It’s a bit unusual and even a little wacky at times, but somehow the book makes perfect sense with just a shift of position, like how Miranda learns to see mushrooms: “breathe, look for subtle shifts in colour, texture, a bending of the light.” (136) This is a story that, like Miranda’s seaweed, wraps itself around you, lingering long after the reading is done.