Johanna Bell's 'Department of the Vanishing': A Lyrebird's Cry in a Silent World
Johanna Bell's debut novel, Department of the Vanishing, is a wild little miracle of a book that defies easy categorization. Published by the independent press Transit Lounge, this work is not built for tidy elevator pitches but thrives on risk-taking and innovation. It presents a terrifyingly plausible future where an Australian government office, the Department of the Vanishing (DoV), is tasked with cataloguing the casualties of the Anthropocene, particularly the mass extinction of birds.
The Lyrebird as a Metaphor for Accountability
Superb lyrebirds (Menura novaehollandiae) serve as a central metaphor in Bell's narrative. These birds are nature's archivists, gathering sounds from chirrups to chainsaws and preserving them in living playback. Their songs record the damage humans inflict and the creatures we erase, holding us to account. Bell's novel opens with a magnificent chorus of transliterated birdsong, reading like a manifesto that underscores what is at stake in our environmental crisis.
In this imagined future, the air has fallen quiet as birds die in millions due to overheating, infection, and pollution. The DoV, with its squalid basement office and ever-shrinking budget, archives these losses, prioritizing which species to record. The archive becomes a place where extinct species die a second time, safe from being noticed, missed, or mourned.
Ava Wilde's Journey Through Bureaucracy and Memory
The narrator, Ava Wilde, has spent two decades boxing the dead in the DoV, trying to believe her work serves a public good. However, something in her has come undone in this officious tomb. The story begins in the summer of 2029, with Ava in a police interrogation room accused of stealing files. This leads to questions about ownership of memory and ties back to her father, a naturalist who vanished thirty years ago while chasing a lyrebird's song.
Ava's mother, suffering from dementia, may hold crucial information, but her memory is steadily hollowing out. As the New South Wales police gather and redact evidence, Ava remembers, her mother forgets, and readers are left to assemble the story from surviving clues, becoming detectives in the process.
Form and Style: A Paratextual Bricolage
Written largely in verse, Department of the Vanishing incorporates historical photographs, mocked-up artefacts, witness statements, field notes, and natural history factoids. This paratextual bricolage creates a form that is both a murder-board and a bird's nest, reflecting the novel's themes of fragmentation and reconstruction. While some quibbles exist—such as Ava's overly perfect name or flat moments in the verse—the book is formally alive and thrillingly innovative.
Bell's work echoes other Australian eco-novelists like James Bradley and Charlotte McConaghy, as well as poets like John Kinsella, but she carves out her own unique noise. The inclusion of real newspaper headlines about eco-terror adds to the novel's chilling plausibility, suggesting that a version of the DoV might already exist in corridors near the Threatened Species Commissioner.
Themes of Climate Grief and Bureaucratic Brutality
From Kafka to Orwell, novelists have depicted monsters that keep office hours, and Bell continues this tradition by exploring the quiet brutality of diligence and procedure. The novel engages with contemporary terms like solastalgia, eco-paralysis, and climate grief, highlighting the obscenity of making erasure seem ordinary. As birdsong fades, the dictionary fattens, warning that the world may end not with a bang but with the click of a filing cabinet.
Department of the Vanishing is a participatory novel that trusts readers to help build meaning, akin to works like Rodney Hall's Vortex or David Owen Kelly's Host Cities. It is a deeply gratifying read that challenges us to admit our complicity in environmental destruction, making it a must-read for those concerned with climate change and literary innovation.
