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

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...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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