DEPARTMENT OF THE VANISHING (Transit Lounge 2026) won the Tasmanian Literary Award for author Johanna Bell. This book is an eclectic mix of form, content and issues; an unusual prose poem punctuated with photographs, redacted police interviews, scientific data, newspaper cutouts, lists, letters and handwritten notes.
In her exciting and experimental style, Bell navigates species decline, climate change, bureaucracy and secret conspiracies. She explores the personal effect of someone long missing, the decline of dementia, the relationships between mothers and daughters, and between fathers and daughters. She is fascinated by bird species, particularly the Australian lyrebird. The book is an elegy to futility but also to quiet persistence.
Ava lives in a time in the near future when birdsong no longer graces our world. The silence is deafening. Her job at The Department involves rebuilding lost species and cataloguing fragments of scientific data, art, birdsong recordings and journal entries about the earth’s birdlife that, once plentiful, has gradually vanished.
This is a book with lots of white space interspersed with dense documentation and photographic evidence, all marked by date, time and place (and sometimes ‘private’, ‘discarded’ or ‘received’). The structure and form are ingeniously crafted. The prose poetry reads like a fast-moving novel, and Ava’s backstory is skilfully intertwined with the current narrative.
The story is also sensual, sexual, coarse, urgent, tender, passionate and full of lust and desire.
The lyrebird is a continual motif: its song, mimicry, plumage, habitat, mating rituals, parenting and historical significance.
For lovers of the work of James Bradley, Jane Rawson, Kris Kneen and Amanda Niehaus, this exceptionally beautiful, brilliant and bold novel asks the reader to think about birdsong, mass extinction, humanity’s mark on the planet, the value of archival material, and whether it is possible to come back from the brink.