It wouldn't do to leave pieces of her for another man to collect and repair later.

Raindrops on a leaf. Geilston Bay, November 2020.

It is hard to know where one is to start with this review. The only certainty is the unease with which its success must have brought the Glasgow Taxi Owners' Association.

'Loved' is not really an appropriate word, given the dark and desolate subject matter. Yet as a work of art, it is both affecting and remarkable. Even in the blackest moments – and mark my words, things get mighty black – there is a sense of promise and hope that is never quite snubbed out.

Our titular hero, as oddly aloof and outcast as he is, somehow weathers through a set of circumstances that would do most of us in. His journey puts even the most tormented of Dickens's characters to shame.

The author has done a fantastic job ensuring that even the many villains of the piece have shades beyond the one-dimensional, perhaps aside from Shug Senior and Thatcher herself (although I hold a particular antagonism for the vile Jinty McClinchy). This is none more true than in the case of Agnes.

In not flinching in detailing the realities of poverty, addiction, bigotry, intolerance and oppression, the book is not for the faint-hearted. Vivid and viseral descriptions of violence, sexual assualt, cruelty, self-harm and the raw details of alcoholism are littered throughout, but these are offset from those moments of tenderness and love that occasionally shine through.

I won't say more, other than to advise you to give it a chance and stick with it through the bleakest moments. This one will stay with me for a very long time.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Comments

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

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Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

This will hurt me...

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