''Drift Street'' is a fiction book by Australian author Claire Mendes. Karen Brooks says that along with Edward Berridge's ''
The Lives of the Saints'' and
Andrew McGahan's ''
Praise
Praise as a form of social interaction expresses recognition, reassurance or admiration.
Praise is expressed verbally as well as by body language (facial expression and gestures).
Verbal praise consists of a positive evaluations of another's ...
'', ''Drift Street'' is a
grunge lit
Grunge lit (an abbreviation for "grunge literature") is an Australian literary genre usually applied to fictional or semi-autobiographical writing concerned with dissatisfied and disenfranchised young people living in suburban or inner-city surrou ...
book which "...explor
sthe psychosocial and psychosexual limitations of young sub/urban characters in relation to the imaginary and socially constructed boundaries defining...self and other" and "opening up" new "limnal
oundaryspaces" where the concept of an
abject
In critical theory, abjection is the state of being cast off and separated from norms and rules, especially on the scale of society and morality. The term has been explored in post-structuralism as that which inherently disturbs conventional ident ...
human body can be explored. Brooks states that Berridge's short stories provide "...a variety of violent, disaffected and often abject young people", characters who "...blur and often overturn" the boundaries between suburban and urban space.
Analysis
The characters in ''Drift Street'' are described as being unhealthy, unclean, overweight, tattooed, having greasy hair, and living in deteriorating dwellings "that resemble the bodies who inhabit them". The ''Drift Street'' characters are "vile and abusive" people who prey on "unattractive victims". The Washbourne family in this novel has an abusive, alcoholic father, two adult sons who are mostly unemployed and one of whom is in a Neo-Nazi gang and "pollutes his body" with drugs, and there is an incestuous relationship between the father and the daughter.
Karen Brooks states that ''Drift Street'', Edward Berridge's ''The Lives of the Saints'', and Andrew McGahan's ''Praise'' "...explor
the psychosocial and psychosexual limitations of young sub/urban characters in relation to the imaginary and socially constructed boundaries defining...self and other" and "opening up" new "limnal
oundaryspaces" where the concept of an
abject
In critical theory, abjection is the state of being cast off and separated from norms and rules, especially on the scale of society and morality. The term has been explored in post-structuralism as that which inherently disturbs conventional ident ...
human body can be explored. Brooks states that Berridge's short stories provide "...a variety of violent, disaffected and often abject young people", characters who "...blur and often overturn" the boundaries between suburban and urban space. Brooks states that the marginalized characters in ''The Lives of the Saints'', ''Drift Street'' and ''Praise'') are able to stay in "shit creek" (an undesirable setting or situation) and "diver
.. flows" of these "creeks", thus claiming their rough settings' "limnality" (being in a border situation or transitional setting) and their own "abjection" (having "abject bodies" with health problems, disease, etc.) as "sites of symbolic empowerment and agency".
References
{{Reflist
Grunge lit
1995 Australian novels