The Great Undoing by Sharlene Allsopp
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a thriving empire in possession of a stolen future must be in want of an historian.”
I first read Sharlene Allsopp’s work when she submitted a creative nonfiction piece called “Blurring the Borders” to the callout for Issue 1 of Aniko Magazine. The theme of the issue was ‘unsung’. It was 2020, and we were living in the aftermath of devastating bushfires, the upswelling of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the very beginnings of Covid-19. Sharlene’s piece – about discovering by chance that her great-grandfather, a Bundjalung man, had served in WWI at a time when the Defence Act outlawed Indigenous service – showed me that literature could truly shake the foundations of a nation.
This story, this truth, weaves into the fabric of her debut novel, The Great Undoing (Ultimo Press, 2024). This speculative fiction novel is set in an apocalyptic future and narrated by Scarlet Friday, Truth-Teller: a job created under a new government policy to counter and correct Australia’s historical record. Scarlet is living in London when she uncovers the truth about her great-great-grandfather William Friday. While these revelations rock her own life, the world as she knows it is about to come undone.
In this future , almost all countries rely on a biotechnology called BloodTalk. Once injected into the bloodstream, there is no longer a need for passports, IDs, or even smartphones, as every citizen is monitored and tracked 24/7. It was first developed by Australian scientists to combat a series of deadly pandemics, beginning life as a vaccine before being co-opted by the Australian government as a mode of control to “hold the world hostage.”
“Dictatorships monitored their own borders. They knew where all their citizens were, all the time. The world had successfully eliminated refugees.”
When BloodTalk’s satellite infrastructure is taken out by e-terrorists, the system collapses, and the world devolves into violence and chaos. This is ‘The Great Undoing’ of the story’s title. Scarlet becomes an “Australian refugee,” adrift in London, and must make her way back to Australia alongside her friend David, a fellow Australian and scientist.
“We both lift our gaze to the heavens, searching for that which cannot be seen–the digital language that connects the satellites and the Earth. Of course, the sky is silent now, and the code swirls around our bloodstream with no apparatus to interpret it. No discourse to tell anyone who we are or what we are. Or where we belong.”
This aspect of the novel’s plot is written in the spirit of an apocalypse thriller, with Scarlet and David becoming embroiled in a global, high-stakes adventure. But if you think you’re in for a straightforward ride, think again: there are many other great undoings to come — of identity, nation, history, and even the novel itself as a form.
Allsopp is highly attuned to the power of language and its political and material effects. The novel is presented as Scarlet’s diary entries written on the run over a faded copy of (real-life historian) Ernest Scott’s Short History of Australia (1916). It is thus a palimpsest, or as she calls it, her “heresy”: an apt metaphor for the work of rewriting history. As Scarlet says:
“Language breathes power into discourses of liberation and oppression, both creating and destroying futures… I wanted to be a Truth-Teller because I knew some things about the power of words.”
One of the first things you notice upon opening the book is its experimental approach to structure. The novel is divided into several sections, each featuring chapters that alternate between “Long Before Now,” “Then,” “Now,” and “Before Now”. These multiple timelines take us back and forth from her current escape to family life on Country to a rockstar relationship (more on that below). As Allsopp notes in The Griffith Review:
“The literary techniques I always return to are analepsis and prolepsis – flashbacks and flash forwards. I go back to go forward.”
This jumping in time can feel somewhat erratic, pulling the reader out of the narrative and diffusing some of the tension and pleasures of an action-driven thriller. However, it also has an anti-colonial edge to it. In a contributor interview for Issue 1, Allsopp said: “Albert Camus said that ‘fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.’ I would add that history is the fiction through which Nations tell lies.” Australia, of course, was founded on a lie – that of terra nullius – and Scarlet likens the attempt at settler nation-building to a Charles Dickens novel.
“Australia likes to narrate her story from the present, looking back. She pretends that she has grown up in a cohesive, linear form, like the protagonist of a Victorian realist novel. She pretends that she is a credible omniscient narrator. Worst of all, when her ugly reality is held up in front of her like a mirror, she goes all Miss Havisham on you, gaslighting you until you go along with her particular version of the truth.”
Allsopp’s refusal of a linear narrative destabilises the colonial narrative at the level of form.
The Great Undoing is also capacious in terms of genre. It joins a host of political speculative fiction by Indigenous writers such as Claire G. Coleman, Alexis Wright, and Ellen Van Neerven. These authors, and many more, are namechecked in the book—partly Allsopp wearing her influences on her sleeve, partly a rewriting of the nation’s literary canon.
But the other genre also central to this book—and mentioned somewhat rarely in reviews—is contemporary romance. Scarlet’s love story with poetic frontman Dylan Silver takes up a substantial portion of the novel's flashbacks.
“Looking at him was like watching a sunset. You try not to look too hard. You try to look all around the sun but not at it, until eventually you just see shadow-spots of confetti everywhere. He’s long left the room, but I can still see the rainbow confetti spots. Like even the room celebrates that he was here.”
Rather than ‘undoing’ Scarlet, Dylan puts her back together – or rather, they are both somewhat undone by each other. But Dylan is perhaps the least substantial character in the book, and I was far less compelled by Scarlet’s infatuation with him – probably because romance isn’t my genre of choice and their relationship wasn’t as essential to the broader plot. I would have preferred to read more about everyday life under BloodTalk instead, as a fair amount of the world-building is sketched in as exposition and backstory.
Reckoning with the past, decolonising the archive, telling the truth: this is Scarlet’s (and Allsopp’s) mission – and while this is an overtly political book, it is also an incredibly personal one. As Allsopp notes:
“Just like Scarlet, I must rework my own foundational myths as my great-grandfather’s stories force me to re-evaluate the lies that Australia tells. I never intended for the novel to undo me, but I am learning that the truth is powerful. It cannot be contained. Country will tell our truths, despite the lies built to hem them in.”
The Great Undoing is ambitious, sentimental, urgent, over the top, exciting, earnest and angry. And it will certainly undo you.
Emily Riches is a writer and editor from Mullumbimby, currently living on Cammeraygal land (Sydney). She founded Aniko Press to bring passionate writers and curious readers together, discover new voices and create a space for creative community. You can get in touch at emily@anikopress.com.